[Mediawiki-l] Re: idea: Wiki-Index

[Jan Steinman]

> From: Andr?s Kardos <k.andris at gmail.com>
>
> Wikipedia has a lot of information, and it is heavily crosslinked.  
> But it's not
> indexed. I mean an index of people, and index of places and an  
> index of things.
> And events. And countries. And lakes. And whatever.

Although nothing exactly like what you're describing currently  
exists, I think (as Brion points out) similar functionality already  
exists.

For one thing, Categories. I think they are poorly managed at  
present, and could use some additional support. I say this without  
having given it much thought, and without any suggestions, so I know  
I'm setting myself up for criticism here! :-)

For another thing, Special:Allpages. This *is* an index already.  
(What you're asking for is not formerly an *index.*) The concept  
could be expanded by hacking a copy of Special:Allpages into a  
concordance, where both the link and link text would have meaning, as  
well as preceding and following words. That could be done  
mechanically, which (IMHO) is an vast advantage over giving the  
WikiPedia public yet another tool to master or misuse!

> "indexers" would be wikipedians who index things. Make and index, like
> "countries" or "operating systems" or "mysteries". And then collect  
> things into
> that index.

I dated a professional indexer once. At least before Microsoft Word  
made everyone an (untrained, unskilled) indexer, this was a  
profession with its own society and conferences and such. Doing it  
"correctly" is difficult, specialized work. Doing it by rote *should*  
be automatic and mechanical, rather than depend on untrained indexers.


:::: Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting  
different results
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Item/99AU22>