Categories, Portals, Wikiportals, Wikiprojects and Notice Boards - WikiEN-l

15 Oct 2005


      It's my view that our systems for co-ordinating both readers and editors 
are currently poorly organised. I'll describe what each of these things 
attempt to achieve (as I see it) and then explain why this causes 
several problems and suggest solutions.
Categories are in theory perfectly simple. [[:Category:English Poets]], 
for example lists all our articles on English poets and does nothing 
else. We also , however, have categories pretending to be portals. 
[[:Category:Mathematics]] is the perfect example of this - there is a 
perfectly good Portal stuck on to the top of a perfectly good Category. 
The Mathematics Portal actually redirects to it.
We also have straight-forward Portals, which are purely (or almost 
purely) designed for readers. The [[Portal:Cricket|Cricket Portal]] is a 
good example of one of these. It contains an introduction to the topic, 
a few pictures and links to some of the more important related articles. 
The only item which is not aimed solely at readers is an invitation to 
participate in the associated WikiProject.
We also have WikiPortals. These contain the same sort of stuff as 
Portals but with extra bits thrown in, aimed at editors. To pick a few 
examples at random, the [[Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Brazil|Brazil 
WikiPortal]] invites people to add information to a list of 
Brazil-related stubs and contains a little information about when it was 
made and who runs it, The [[Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Physics|Physics 
WikiPortal]] has a brief 'things you can do' list and the 
[[Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Music|Music WikiPortal]] links to connected 
WikiProjects.
WikiProjects aim to "help coordinate and organize article writing". Lots 
of these are aimed purely at getting articles on the same subject to 
share a format/layout etc. [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mountains|The 
mountains WikiProject]] for example is 90% instructions on how to set 
out articles on mountains, 8% administration and 2% links to resources 
for article writing. The only thing in the 
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Archaeology|Archaeology WikiProject]] is a list 
of articles that people might like to contribute to.
Finally, there are also [[Wikipedia:Regional_notice_boards|Regional 
Wikipedians' Notice Boards]]. These contain all sorts of lovely stuff - 
articles to create, expand, pictures to find, relevant peer reviews, 
articles for deletion, featured article candidates and so on.
The problem as I see it is that the functions of these things overlap, 
making the system as a whole overcomplicated. I'll now list the three 
main problematic areas and suggest solutions.
1. Categories and Portals are essentially coming at the same job from 
different angles. They both provide topic-based navigation, Categories 
with the emphasis on being comprehensive and Portals with the emphasis 
on providing an attractive interface. At the moment our Categories are 
far more developed than our Portals, but given enough time there 
probably would (or could) be a portal covering each Category. There are 
two obvious solutions to this and at the moment we're doing both 
inconsistently. We should either decide to split the two up completely 
as is done in [[Portal:Cricket]] and [[:Category:Cricket]] or put them 
together one one page as at [[:Category:Mathematics]]. My personal 
preference is to keep them separate but with prominent links between 
them, but either solution would be acceptable. The system as it stands, 
however, is illogical and confusing.
2. Portals and WikiPortals are more or less the same thing. The editor 
related content in WikiPortals is useful but certainly not the sort of 
thing we should be presenting to the public. I think we should take all 
the reader-orientated content from our WikiPortals and transfer it to 
Portals. One link inviting people to edit is probably acceptable, as at 
the Cricket Portal, but certainly no more. What is left can be 
incorporated somewhere else, which leads me to...
3. Our editor-orientated pages. Here we have Noticeboards and 
WikiProjects doing the more or less the same thing - co-ordinating 
editors' efforts in a certain field. Regional Wikipedians' Noticeboards 
I think are a great idea, except for the first word. I see no reason why 
the Noticeboard concept should be restircted to regions. I think it 
would be equally applicable to any other topic area. I discussed 
mountains earlier and I think the content at the Mountains WikiProject 
could quite easily be incorporated into a Mountains Noticeboard 
(possibly on a well-marked subpage) which would also allow for the 
inclusion of information such as that currently on the Regional 
Noticeboards - requested articles, articles for expansion, up for 
featured articles etc. These could also include any information left 
over from the relevant WikiPortal.
Basically, I think we should attempt to simplify the system and organise 
it along more logical grounds. This would help our readers to navigate 
the site and find the content they want and also help our editors to 
create this content.
Comments and criticism etc welcome
(Also posted at the Village Pump)
Adam
(Cherry blossom tree)