Talk:Table of contents

From ArchWiki
Revision as of 12:08, 11 May 2012 by Kynikos (talk | contribs) (Category:Help: done)
Jump to: navigation, search

ToC restructuring

I propose the following (major) changes to the ArchWiki category tree:

Removal of Category:Pages sorted by type (English)
Currently we distinguish between four types of articles: FAQs, General, Guidelines, and HOWTOs. I believe that the majority of FAQ articles should be merged into the main FAQ; the general category is not helpful in any way; almost all articles under guidelines deal with package management (see Category:Package development instead); and every article is a HOWTO in the sense that it explains how to install/configure/etc. something (further, ArchWiki is moving away from the HOWTO style of writing (step 1, step 2, step 3...))
Flattening of the tree
The Category:System administration and Category:Desktop user's guide (English) categories are unnecessary and confusing. Consider Desktop user's guide -> Category:Utilities (English) (utilities not used for system administration?) and System administration -> Software -> Category:Display managers (display managers not used by desktop users?) Similarly, the Category:Hardware (English) and Category:Software categories can easily be eliminated. Categories that relate specifically to hardware can be renamed (e.g. Hardware -> Category:Graphics can become Graphics hardware).
i18n standardization
Non-English categories should follow the naming scheme Title in English (Language). See Help:i18n for details. Template:i18n should be included on all category pages. Furthermore, all category titles should be appropriately capitalized (Like a Title).

Are there any objections? I will prepare an outline of my imagined category tree shortly.

-- pointone 20:20, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

+1 for all. :-) Unfortunately I don't have much time and will have even less. -- Karol 20:33, 10 May 2011 (EDT)
I'm in favour of points 1 and 3 but basically against the systematic flattening of the tree, but it's just a matter of taste, and we are 2 vs 1 here, so I'll just shut up now :D -- Kynikos 09:21, 11 May 2011 (EDT)
Phew! That was one mess of work! No longer do we distinguish between article topics and types. I will propose changes to the tree regarding (2) in detail before committing to anything. -- pointone 17:08, 10 June 2011 (EDT)
Very good job pointone, it has surely been worth the effort! -- Kynikos 10:24, 11 June 2011 (EDT)

Capitalization

[split from a previous discussion, now closed. -- Kynikos 16:48, 23 April 2012 (EDT)]

As I began sorting and standardizing the Spanish categories, I realized that many English categories have improper capitalization. These issues could probably more efficiently be dealt with simultaneously. --Emiralle 21:46, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

I can easily solve this one with my bot, although it's not urgent. -- Kynikos 16:48, 23 April 2012 (EDT)

"also in" links

Do you like seeing the "also in" links next to categories that have more than one parent? -- Kynikos 06:56, 1 March 2012 (EST)

Related discussion: Help talk:Style#Category pages - tree or otherwise? If we return to a tree structure, "also in" links would not exist. -- pointone 19:18, 13 March 2012 (EDT)
But maybe in that case displaying them would be even more important, as a means of detecting violations to the rule. -- Kynikos 08:27, 14 March 2012 (EDT)
Quite right. My vote is conditional upon the tree decision, then. If a tree structure is enforced, display it to detect violations. If we allow multiple categories, however, hide it to avoid clutter. -- pointone 13:04, 15 March 2012 (EDT)
Ah kk your position is perfectly clear. However I wouldn't consider the ToC only as a tool for end-users, I think it's also very useful for maintainers, in fact being able to spot multi-parent categories (be them allowed or not) gives a clearer idea of how the articles are structured.
Some ideas to reduce/avoid clutter:
(I'll probably implement this solution for the next update)
(for this option, place the mouse on the asterisk; we can use another symbol, like + ^ #  !)
-- Kynikos 07:06, 16 March 2012 (EDT)
The first idea is implemented currently with <small>. -- Kynikos 11:56, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

Poll

Display it
[vote with : ~~~~]
thestinger 00:48, 2 March 2012 (EST)
Skydiver 00:51, 2 March 2012 (EST)
Kynikos 05:09, 2 March 2012 (EST)
Don't display it
[vote with : ~~~~]
Fengchao 20:09, 1 March 2012 (EST)
pointone 19:18, 13 March 2012 (EDT)

"also in" translations

Currently only Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese have a translated "also in" string for categories with more than one parent, all the others are using the English wording. Please request new translations here. -- Kynikos 05:59, 12 March 2012 (EDT)

Flattening of the tree

Change Software category

Technically every article is about "software", even those inside "Hardware" (drivers are software): based on what would remain in "Software" we should see if "Software" can be renamed to a more specific title, what do you think? -- Kynikos 03:54, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

I think the Software category is almost just as generic as the top-level English category. It could apply to pretty much everything in the wiki, so I don't think there would be any harm in just getting rid of it (but I'm fine with it staying too). thestinger 19:50, 20 April 2012 (EDT)
Software is too generic and it contains too much contents even after Networking and Development is out which make the category hard to navigate. I plan to split pages mainly about up layer applications into Category:Applications. Then the pages left seems to be mainly about "System components" such as boot loader, kernel, deamon, init, package manager, ABS, Desktop environment, window manager and so on. We can check whether they fit well into Category:System Compontents. Right now I am starting to move Arch specific topic into Category:About Arch. -- Fengchao 00:00, 21 April 2012 (EDT)
Now Networking and Development become a top category of its own. The new proposal for next step here is:
Split pages in Category:Software and Category:System administration into 2 parts by their difficulty:
  • Category:Applications. It is the easy part. People with no Operation system knowledge can read them.
  • System Components. Pages there are more harder than Applications. To fully understand these pages, Operation system knowledge is needed. And after learning these pages, the reader will become a nerd of computer :).
The steps to take:
  1. Create a new category Category:Applications.
  2. Move pages fit in Category:Applications there.
  3. Move pages left in Category:Software into Category:System administration.
  4. Discuss whether Category:System administration should changed to other name such as Category:System Components.
-- Fengchao 01:34, 25 April 2012 (EDT)
It's an interesting approach, you can try it, the result will be better than the current situation in any case :) -- Kynikos 11:28, 25 April 2012 (EDT)
Ah, by the way I can handle step 3 with my bot, in case there are many articles left there, just ask me ;) -- Kynikos 04:39, 26 April 2012 (EDT)
Now that the first 3 steps are finished. I think we can leave the name Category:System administration unchanged and start sorting sub categories based on current main structure. -- Fengchao (talk) 03:23, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Category:Help

What about moving Category:Help under Category:ArchWiki now? -- Kynikos (talk) 20:31, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

+1. -- Fengchao (talk) 03:23, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
I've been bold and done it already. -- Kynikos (talk) 12:08, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Talk:Table_of_Contents&oldid=201086
wiki.archlinux.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-13
31481
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:BHLJNQ66RNYQ55ASIGXHSCFVBFMNKKTL
<urn:uuid:93630373-de07-447a-8e91-7c8e1cac5b58>
2017-03-27T07:13:19Z
5.9.250.164
sha1:Y3PE7GKYU445UAKTP6JMT26V3QPYIJTZ
<urn:uuid:da6bfb0c-1810-4363-8b34-689bf7003496>
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Talk:Table_of_Contents&oldid=201086
length
response
<urn:uuid:cc9d89aa-7cb2-4c48-96d3-ca91e6cac4ae>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-13
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for March 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf