Categories and SubPages as it pertains to the Wiki Playbook

[Matthew East]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Andrew
Sayers<andrew-bugs.launchpad.net at pileofstuff.org> wrote:
> I've been having a go at creating a hierarchy using the existing
> "category" system built into MoinMoin.  The current version is here:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WikiSandBox/CategoryConcept
>
> The basic idea is to turn category pages into something similar to
> Wikipedia's "templates", so each category can have a standard footer,
> pointing the reader to other areas in the category.  I think this
> fulfils the requirements of a tag system, and gives the user some
> navigation aid to boot.

I find the page a bit hard to follow, and it's not a 100% clear to me
how it would work.

Am I right that the idea is to use categories to distinguish between
different subject matters in the wiki (e.g. CategoryGames,
CategoryInternet), more or less as currently done [1], but then to add
the feature of using subpages to the relevant category page itself to
provide content that can be present in all pages in that category? You
would then use the category page itself as a landing page for pages in
that category.

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CategoryCategory

If so, that sounds like a good idea to me, although potentially quite
high maintenance. I guess the way for it to work in practice would be
to combine Moin's category and template features, so that in order to
create a new page in "CategoryGames", such as
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NewGamePage, you would have a
template down the left hand side of the page creation dialog which
would include all the relevant page content.

My potential concerns with the idea would be (a) whether in practice
we are going to have enough manpower to get the system up and running,
and then to maintain it; and (b) whether it's going to seem slightly
complicated for potential new editors to understand the system and put
them off contributing. I'd be very interested in finding out your
thoughts on those points, as well as whether I've correctly understood
the idea.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF