----- Original Message -----
From: "James Mohr" <mediawiki(a)jimmo.com>
To: <mediawiki-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Knowledge Management and MediaWiki
(...)
The idea of a site map is not a bad idea. There is obviously a lot of
manual
work to do (or not?), but that offers one more method of finding the
information. I have run into the argument that the information **has to**
be
stored hierarchically. That there is some absolute requirement somewhere.
Granted humans natually put things into categories, but I see that most of
the belief that things must be in hierarchies is because that is the way
we
are used to storing files on hard disks. Thus we store files for our web
servers like that. Also, up to now, most web sites have had some kind of
hierarchy due to limited search mechanisms.
I am not exactly sure what you mean by "top-level categories doesn't link
to
the new sitemap, since they do not belong in any category." What would be
a
top-level category on your site where you do not yet have wiki categories.
I
am asking because we are working on a start page with various blocks for
"top
level" categories. For example, administration, technical, customer, etc.
To
some extent, these are too vague to put into wiki categories, so I am not
sure if it really makes sense to create wiki categories.
(...)
At first I tried to develop a useredited sitemap/index, which clearly has
the advantage of providing additional information on the pages linked to. In
effect though, this is clearly often not updated effectively enough,
especially on a smaller wiki.
So, I decided to have a go at using categories more efficiently. I edited
the text at "Special:Categories" to contain our top-level categories - as
well as all categories in the wiki (which are included automatically on this
special-page).
Our top-level categories are "Cultural Networks" (which covers everything
from rockbands and periodicals to global media institutions and broadcast
networks), "Persons" (all pages on individual artists, theorists, directors
etc.), "Cultural Productions" (which covers every single publication, song
or film in the wiki)... etc. My idea is that all pages belonging to a
subcategory will also belong to one of these top-level categories, so
effectively all pages in the wiki is in a category. We also employ more
subject-oriented indexing categories, which are much more diverse, spreading
over several namespaces and across other categories. These are completely
non-hierarchical. It is of course also possible for pages to coexist, say in
both a "network" category and a "cultural works" category - in the
case of a
periodical for instance, which is a publication, yet also an editorial
institution. The top-level categories are very vague, yet deliberately cut
out to describe the different kinds of content we have and want in the wiki.
They also have the purpose to simply display the mass of, as well as what
kind of information is in the wiki, for users and visitors(which can
otherwise be difficult to get an overview of).
The only (minor) problem with using "Special:Categories" as a sitemap is,
that since our top-level categories aren't themselves in any category, they
won't automatically give a link back to the Special:Categories (our sitemap)
page (as all pages or categories in a category do). This is a minor issue,
really, one which I expect could be solved comparatively easy (if by no
other way, then just by inserting this link manually).
What would be vastly more interesting, is to have more customizable category
pages - for instance, entries in a category being able to display data on
the pages in the category at a glance (say the first two lines of wikitext
on a page, latest author, page views), as well as sorting the pages in the
category for display after userchosen criteria. "Show me the latest edited
pages in this category" - "Show me the most popular pages in this
category" - "Show me only pages from this namespace, this date interval"
etc... What I guess I am talking about is combining the very efficient
cross-non-hierarchical category system with the MySQL requests of what is
now hidden in very "blocky" and "not-so-flexible" Specialpages (which
only
is used for the wiki as a whole, and for the primary namespace in
particular). Ideally I want all the functionality of the specialpages to be
enabled for each category, each namespace and for all files in the wiki.
This could be implemented with an expanded dropdown menu system, which is
already in place for several Specialpages.
This kind of expanded functionality would make MediaWiki ultimately the most
powerful indexing tool you could find ever.
I know this kind of functionality will probably not find its way into
Wikipedia at present, because it will constitute too great server loads etc.
But in the long run, I am not so worried about server load issues. On
smaller wikis the load times will probably be less of a problem, and you
could make this kind of indexing functionality optional, to be dis/enabled
in the localsettings.
Best wishes,
Morten :-)
--
Crews Cut Production
Morten Blaabjerg
Danmarksgade 97 - DK-5000 Odense C
Tlf. 65 90 60 88 / 51 80 91 55
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