[Wikitech-l] Category pruning

Wed Jul 14 18:56:25 UTC 2004

Rowan Collins wrote:
> removal of a category, because the article end of the equation is
> stored in the text of the article, rather than (as well as?)
> separately in the DB.

The reason that they are stored in the article text is that article
texts are easy to edit.  If you want to avoid this, you have to
provide another easy way to input and edit the same information.
Perhaps the edit page should have a list of one-line input fields
for metadata under the big textarea, like this:

  [ Germany is a country in Europe...   ]
  [ bla bla                             ]
  [ bla bla                             ]

  metadata: [ de:Deutschland    ]  (leave blank to remove)
  metadata: [ category: Country ]
  metadata: [ fr:Allemagne      ]
  metadata: [                   ]  (add new metadata here)

  [save]  [preview]

However, this is the road to compartmentalization, and wiki has so far
been very successful in doing without that.

I less intrusive approach would be to separate out all metadata when
the page is saved, and never actually store metadata with the article
text.  In this case, it has to be collected from where it is stored
before the textarea is presented to the next editor.

-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/