Post Hoary

[Corey Burger]

On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 15:48:24 -0800, Simon Michael <simon at joyful.com> wrote:
> Corey Burger wrote:
> > Watchlists are pages that allow you to chose a subsection of the wiki
> > to watch for changed. Basically a filtered recent changes.
> 
> I see. We presently provide that via mail subscription to pages of
> interest. But there's no web-based feature for filtering RC. It's not a
> hard feature to implement if becomes a priority.
> 
> A related, low tech approach is to subscribe to the whole wiki  or to
> the rss feeds in WikiWishlist and set up filter rules in your reader.
> 
> > As for page parenting, I find it very counter intuitive and rigid.
> > Wikis allow really easy linking. Categories are far more flexible.
> > Categories essentially allow a page to have several "parents", the
> > categories.
> 
> Ok, but how does the option to set parents interfere with easy linking,
> or the use of category markers (WikiBadges) ?
>
> Note you can set multiple parents (perhaps there is an issue with the
> plone skin not displaying this clearly). And you're free to leave your
> pages with no parent, to use wiki badges, to link anywhere, to use name
> prefixes and suffixes, as you prefer.
> 
> I'm not sure if you're arguing against the notion of parenting, or it's
> use in the ubuntu wiki. Here's why I personally like it:
> 
> - it helps me get an overview and mentally chunk the soup of pages into
> larger, logical pieces, when needed
Ok, and so do categories which are more flexible
> 
> - it allows me to 'alt u' up to the next level when I'm looking at a
> too-detailed page and want a bigger picture
But what do you parent it under. If you have multi parents, where does alt-u go?

> 
> - it links the subtopics automatically, freeing me from the need to
> maintain those links and making it very cheap to move pages around
Categories do that as well
> 
> - it allows me to print a logical group of pages as a single document
> (eg http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/DocumentationArea/print)
Again, so can categories,
> 
> - it gives the possibility of subscribing to a logical group of pages
> (not implemented)
Not implemented in WP either, but it is a good idea.
> 
> Just my 2c. Wikipedia does fine without it and if the community would
> rather not have it, I'll hide some or all of it.
> 
> Thanks for this useful discussion.
> 
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> 

My argument against parenting is its rigidity. I really like the idea,
of data hierarchies, but I don't the ubuntu wiki does it very well.

Corey