On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 17:45:38 +0200, Enrico Weigelt <weigelt(a)metux.de> wrote:
I'm going to do some quite huge changes in
mediawiki and so going
to start a forkoff into phase4.
awaiting you comments :)
I just started playing with gmail account (google's web-based e-mail
system, for those that don't know).
They have a very nice implementation of what they call "Labels". If
you have gmail account, it's best to just play with it. "Labels" are
just a categorization implementation. I can create labels and tag a
given e-mail message with multiple labels.
The idea is not new by any means - it has been done before, it's just
adding very simple metadata to pieces of information.
In context of e-mail "Labels" can be used as equivalent of "virtual
folders" e.g. I tag all e-mails from this list with "wikipedia" label.
In context of WikiPedia, Labels are equivalent of Categories.
They can also be used to implement other things that are done manually
e.g. lists of any kinds (e.g. list of articles nominated for great
writing, list of "most wanted to be written articles). We could use
label "stub" instead of {{stub}} tag etc.
So I think it would be good to have a good implementation of labels
and implement other functionality (e.g. categories) in terms of
labels.
Why bother? I'm a strong believer that good user interface is
important. Label, if implemented well like in gmail, are much better
interface than e.g. [[Category::foo]].
They are more discoverable (assumption is that labels were accessible
from main page).
Just a thought.
Krzysztof Kowalczyk /
http://blog.kowalczyk.info