P2P Foundation Wiki Taxonomy

The P2P Foundation Wiki Taxonomy

Current Direction for the Wiki Taxonomy

The wiki taxonomy is created and maintained to serve the users and visitors of the site.

The current site usage says that users want a simple site with a low barrier to entry.

Simple is good. It's important that users, especially new users, feel comfortable adding information and that they don't run into any big complexity issues.

Facts About Categories and Subcategories

• Fact: Subcategories show up on on Special:Categories page in the flat list of all categories.
• Fact: Subcategories get their own special spot on other category pages.
• Fact: Subcategories are not 'double listed' on category pages. There are just pages named the same thing. And they should probably be merged into the category page.

How do we know what visitors want, and what they need?

• Look at the analytics
  • Improve the analytics
• Listen to feedback
• Empower users to fix it themselves
• Offer encouragement and dialogue wherever possible

Categories - Usability

• When editing a page the usr is presented with no instructions for using categories.
• It is unlikely that users will figure out how to use Categories on their own.
• One on the one hand users won't add a lot of new, potentially dead-end categories. On the other hand, their information may fit well into a category and have to wait until a knowledgeable editor places it into one.

The Changing Taxonomy

Current Taxonomy

May 28, 2010

Special:Categories

Editing Tasks for Taxonomy

Changes to the Current Taxonomy

• Recategorize Michel's ordered Book into the [:Category:Theory | Theory Category]
• Establish "Major Category" Taxonomy on this page. Idea's welcome.
• Recategorize pages into Subcategories
  • User:GoodRollin is arranging pages in subcategories in the area of Category:Commons like Category:Thing Commons .
    • Will also be doing some organizing under "Commons Based Enterprise/Production/Making/Interchange/Systems" once I talk to people about what the heck it should be called.
  • Move country page content into a new subcategory/country page. Sometimes this may serve as introduction to the language pages of a country as well. We may be able to list language pages on this page later using an extension.
  • Move Category:Individuals pages to Category:Bios pages and retitle them with Firstname Lastname (instead of last first).
    • Do a search and merge duplicates along the way.

Extensions to Simplify Taxonomy Management and End User Utility

• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryTree
  • Fact: There's a way to display this category tree if we add an extension. We can embed it where we like so show it off. Very cool.
  • Fact: With a visualization extension 'tagging' articles to multiple levels in a tree will be possible and less and less interesting.
  • Fact: With the ability to visually traverse categories we'll be able to see what edits we need to make a lot easier.