Categories and SubPages as it pertains to the Wiki Playbook

[Phil Bull]

Hi Mark,

On Sun, 2009-08-09 at 14:56 -0400, Marc Kaplan wrote:
> I finished my first pass of the Community Wiki to break it into what
> we eventually would like to call "Categories".  This is a first pass
> and definitely subject to change.  It can be found at the start of
> draft of the Wiki Playbook through Google Docs.
> 
> I decided that before I put the spec up, I want establish the
> different sections first.  I would welcome
> comments/suggestions/criticisms.

What are the categories going to be used for? Are they to help us manage
the wiki or are they intended for use by users?

If it's for us, then I think that there are too many categories. With a
small set of simple categories, people (editors) will be more likely to
choose the right one because they won't have to wade through a long
list. If a given category is only going to have ~5 pages in it then we
should just merge it with another category.

Also, some categories might be ambiguous. For example, if I have an
external hard disk, does that go under "hard drives" or "removable
storage", or both?

If it's for users, then I'd be interested to see whether the proposed
categorisation scheme matches up with users' expectations. I'm worried
that we might be grouping things in a way which seems logical to us, but
doesn't match how actual users look for information. This is a *perfect*
candidate for a card-sorting exercise [1]!

Thanks for working on this, I'm looking forward to having a much more
manageable wiki!

Thanks,

Phil

[1] - http://www.usability.gov/design/cardsort.html

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/people/philbull