From: "Rick DeNatale" rick.denatale@gmail.com
On 3/22/06, Joshua Yeidel yeidel@wsu.edu wrote:
In non-encyclopedia contexts, you may have information architectures that are best expressed using main-space subpages. If so, it isn't hard to set up.
Hierarchies are appealing on the surface because they seem to correspond to the natural world, unfortunately too often they correspond to particular points of view of the world and fall apart when you try to use them to reconcile the views of multiple people*.
Exactly, but it is important to note that hierarchies are very good at modeling... hierarchies!
People get hung up on the semantics of namespaces/subpages. But in reality, there are situations that already have a hierarchical organization -- what better way to represent them, than with subpages?
For example: http://www.EcoReality.org/wiki/Coop_rules
is a legal document of incorporation. It consists of numerous sections. Different people need to work on the different sections independently and concurrently. While it might be nice to be able to refer to a particular section by name somewhere else, that section is essentially useless without the enclosing context.
for a site using mediawiki with a controlled context and/or user set, they might be useful in more general usage...
Exactly! Human knowledge is rife with hierarchies -- not because they are "natural," but because humans invented the model. A company org chart, the Dewey Decimal System, federal/state/county/city government... the examples go on and on.
I agree that, in the most general case, hierarchies are poor choices for modeling the real world. But the "unreal world" of human knowledge has created tons of hierarchies; let's not be so quick to call them all evil and impose some inappropriate structure on top of them.
When all you have is a hammer, all the world resembles a nail. If you have a dogmatic aversion to hierarchies, you're going to have to go through a lot of unnecessary work when you encounter a screw instead of a nail!
:::: Freedom of the commons brings ruin to all. -- Garrett Hardin :::: :::: Jan Steinman (a fossil-fuel free zone!) <http:// www.VeggieVanGogh.com> ::::
At 3:18 PM -0800 3/22/06, Jan Steinman wrote:
Human knowledge is rife with hierarchies -- not because they are "natural," but because humans invented the model.
I agree somewhat with this, but there are many situations in which the universe enforces hierarchical organization. For example, if you start trying to organize physical items, you soon run into the problem that an item can only be in one category (ie, container) at a time. However, that container (eg, a drawer) can be contained in another (eg, a cabinet).
I believe that much of humans' use of hierarchies stems from this interaction between a desire to organize and the limits of the physical universe.
-r
Rich Morin wrote:
At 3:18 PM -0800 3/22/06, Jan Steinman wrote:
Human knowledge is rife with hierarchies -- not because they are "natural," but because humans invented the model.
I agree somewhat with this, but there are many situations in which the universe enforces hierarchical organization. For
I don't know the history of mediawiki, but don't forget there are pages/sub pages (and I agree they must be very strongly related to be usefull), but also categories/sub categories.
and that can accomodate many categorisation kind (one page can have more than one category). This is also very powerfull.
However, the controversy comes probably from the fact than mediawiki is principally aimed to wikipedia, but is so good that many others uses are now frequent :-)
jdd
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org