[Mediawiki-l] Examples of Namespace vs. Category vs Sub-page?

Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher at gmail.com
Sat Jun 23 09:52:14 UTC 2007


On 23/06/07, Monahon, Peter B. <Peter.Monahon at uspto.gov> wrote:
> I'm concerned about how and why to put any data IN to a wiki in the
> first place.  I know that any automation system can only answer
> questions it was pre-told how to answer.  For example, one goal is to be
> able to print a group of pages as a book, but edit them as separate
> pages.  I think you are saying that the MediaWiki print feature does not
> assist in doing that grouping for printing in one-step.  And, neither do
> any of the other features - namespace, category, sub-page - assist in
> grouping the wiki's contents for one-step collected output.

Not that I know of.
I think you should talk to the English Wikibooks project. They WRITE
books. That's all they do. I'm sure they have tools or at least
suggestions for how to manage this.

> Standing back and revisiting what MediaWiki is all about, the
> Wikipedia.org implementation or MediaWiki seems definitive: a bunch of
> separate pages that are somewhat findable with basic word searches.  The
> Wikipedia's goal is to present one page at a time on screen for the
> visiting user of the wiki software.  Also, in order to facilitate (not
> automate) sequential (not one-step) editing or printing, there are
> "gathering" features (such as namespace, category, sub-page, and
> special:pages) that allow a user to cycle through a series of tasks to
> execute them over a group of individual pages, but still manually
> executing whatever they are doing one page at a time.  (This is why
> editing and system administration are so time consuming, right?)

I don't think namespace, category, subpage features faciliate editing
or printing. They faciliate BROWSING. All those features help people
browsing, reading.

Automated tools, created by Wikipedia etc editors, exist to faciliate
editing. e.g. they allow you to do something like "edit each page in
this category". The most well known one that I know of is called the
AutoWikiBrowser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AWB

Also, people use bots to do fully-automated editing. There is a bot
framework which has scripts for many common activities.
http://pywikipediabot.sourceforge.net/

> And I didn't even mention global search and replace!

See bots. :)

> Waaa#3: Another frustration is hidden links that do not show on screen,
> or for cut and paste, and often do not show when printing (I read
> copious printouts and highlight links on paper to search later).  [...] But, I
> find it very frustrating to not have them fully displayed and printed or
> at least underlined so I know there's a link there.

Good grief... use your own print stylesheet then? I don't really think
this is a MediaWiki issue.

> (Please see http://www.webworksite.com/articles/article4.php before
> responding to my "complaints", PLEASE!)

The volunteer world doesn't work like the paid world. If anyone here
was being paid for customer support then that article would be
relevant.

> > Brianna wrote: ... sensible category
> > structure Design ... is a difficult
> > process in a wiki ... (Waaa#4?)
>
> Peter Blaise responds: This is why I mentioned Quicken for DOS, that o'l
> relational database software I've been using, same copy, since the
> 1980s.  It's nothing but a relational database with incredible powers in
> it's "category" and "class" structure for transaction
> searching/sorting/selecting for output.  Analogy wise, a wiki page is
> like a Quicken transaction; a namespace is like a Quicken register/bank
> account.  Why with a modern SQL database, excuse me, an "RDBMS", are
> wiki categories so powerless?

different tools for different tasks. Do you ask on the Quicken mailing
list, "Why is it so difficult for 20,000 users to simultaneously edit
my file?"

At any rate, my point about sensible category structure design being
difficult in a wiki was relating to the fact that you have many users
trying to impose their own vision on a single structure. It was a
point about users, not the software. If one single person designs a
category structure they will be able to implement it just fine.

 I'm so used to the incredible
> sophistication of this 20-year old DOS program that it heightens my
> frustration when a modern wiki is way naive in comparison.

Maybe you should be looking at something from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Open_source_database_management_systems
. Notice there are no wiki engines listed there.

> Here's a sample challenge (simplified example).  Say I have an in-house
> wiki and an ... out house wiki, for lack of a better term.  RDBMS wise,
> they both may need access to zip codes, but otherwise, their data may
> need to be separate from each other.  I could have them both look at the
> same zip code namespace, but keep each other out of each other's
> namespaces (I think).  (Or is this better handles with separate wikis
> using the same MySQL?)

How is this better handled using a wiki rather than a RDBMS anyway?

Why do you want to use a wiki??

> Or, a computer "data elements dictionary" wiki.  I've got multiple
> databases to document.  Each database to be documented may have similar
> table-names and element/column-names.  I could make each database a
> separate page.  Then I could make each element a sub-page of that
> database.  That way I can have, say, 2 elements both called "Name_last".
> One is under Database_inhouse/Name_last.  The other is under
> Database_outhouse/Name_last.  Over time, the authors of those commonly
> named documents might diverge on the meaning and criteria of the data
> elements in their own databases.  One database may even be shut down and
> be retired, deleted from the wiki, with all sub-pages included.  In one
> fell swoop?  No.  That doesn't work!  The sub-pages hang around, as
> orphans of a non-page, don't they?

Correct, deleting a page does not automatically delete its subpages.

(Also, I don't see any links from
> the master page to it's sub-pages, nor from sub-pages to the master
> page.  How to make them appear like at the top like
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver/Projects  that shows a "<
> Toolserver" link at the top of the Projects page to go "up" one page?!?)

You probably haven't enabled subpages in that namespace. In namespaces
that don't have subpages enabled, a slash in a page title is just a
slash, like "AC/DC" is just one page, not "DC" is a subpage of "AC".

Enable subpages:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:%24wgNamespacesWithSubpages

For "auto TOCs" or links from master page to subpages, try using
something like http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Template:AutoTOC (copy the
code from this page into the same name on your wiki). On any page
where you want an auto TOC, put "{{Auto TOC}}".


> Anyway, the above is why I'm trying to find or build the answers.  No
> analogy is perfect.  It's not simply a "how to drive a car" manual I'm
> after.  Nor "how to tune up your car" nor "how to design a car".  But,
> perhaps a wise combination of all these, plus "why travel" and
> "transportation for personal pleasure", as well as "transporting goods
> and services" thrown in as introductory and overriding themes
> throughout.

Well to me it seems like you want "How to drive a car using a boat". :)

regards
Brianna

--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/



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