Workgroup:Categories/Tasklist

Workgroup to develop and organise categories

A workgroup convened to determine the best methods with which WikiEducator may categorise its content

Charter  |  Task list  |  Current map of categories  |  Proposed map of categories  |  Draft guidelines  |  Communications  |  Technical issues

Work in progress, expect frequent changes. Help and feedback is welcome. See discussion page.

These tasks must be completed in order to achieve the goals of this workgroup. Sign-up is voluntary. Completed tasks are listed here. Additional tasks may be added using Template:Task.

Unordered tasks

Unordered tasks are those that do not depend on the completion of other tasks and so can be worked on at any time.

Drafting categorisation guidelines

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Beginner	unlimited	as desired	by the next WCC meeting[1]
Details First draft at Workgroup:Categories/guidelines				Resources Wikipedia's categorisation guidelines
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Progress: 5%

Further detailing the Help:Category page

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
Medium	Beginner	any number	as desired	?
Details The Help:Category page will describe what wiki categories are and how categories are used on WikiEducator. Target audience is beginning and intermediate wikieducators.				Resources Wikipedia's Help:Category page
Sign up: not necessary
Progress: 40%

Designing an instructional tool on how to use categories

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
Medium	Intermediate
Details Many existing wikieducators may want to learn how to use categories according to the developed guidelines. A detailed instructional tool, developed perhaps in tandem with the style guidelines workgroup, would enhance this training effort. Dependent on implementation of new category structure completion of categorisation guidelines.				Resources
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Progress: Task not started.

Updating the category-related sections of the WikiEducator tutorial

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
Medium	Intermediate
Details Category-related content in the Wikieducator tutorial will be reviewed and revised to reflect categorisation guidelines Dependent on implementation of new category structure completion of categorisation guidelines				Resources Wikieducator tutorial
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Progress: Task not started.

Determining which category-related MW extensions to recommend

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
Unknown	Advanced	1-3 who have specific knowledge of MediaWiki extensions
Details Determine what extensions are necessary for the success of the wiki, if any. CategoryTree CustomCategory (may need customisation)				Resources
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Progress: Under discussion

Tasks that must be completed in order

The following tasks are dependent on the completion of other tasks in the list and should be worked on in deadline order, to the extent necessary.

Completing the charter

First draft

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Beginner	any number	dependent on the content	30 October 2009
Details This just involves filling in all the blank spots or replacing the italicised boilerplate text.				Resources Help:Workgroup charter
Sign up: Not necessary
Progress: Completed on 30 Oct 2009

Revision & Final draft

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Beginner	any number	dependent on issues raised, amount of content to be revised	13 November 2009
Details This involves discussion, typically taking place in the form of {{note}} use or on the discussion page, then performing the revisions. Unless it is determined that more time is needed, members may signify their approval after the deadline is reached. If the charter is approved, all non-pertinent content will be removed and the approved charter template added in the header.				Resources Help:Workgroup charter
Sign up: Signup unnecessary
Progress: The task is active, but its progress cannot be tracked.

Organising existing categories

Mapping out existing category structure

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Intermediate	1 per single portion	1-2 hours per week	?
Details The goal here is to gain a knowledge of what categories exist now, their purposes, and what, if any, relationships they now have to other existing categories. If you want to help, in order to make sure we aren't doing the same stuff and editing the same page at the same time, first create a userpage you can draw up your bit of the map on. Then, link your page next to one of the letters in the following list, and work on the categories that start will that particular letter. Use Special:Categories as a directory. In drawing up your portion of the map, I suggest you use this as an example. Use a space character at the beginning of each line to create the box with the monospaced font. Follow each category up to it's top most parent category. You'll see an example that started with the category for Africa, and was followed up to both the Country and Countries categories, neither of which had a parent. A map was drawn for the entire branch/tree.				Resources Special:Categories Workgroup:Categories/Current map
Sign up: A - done B - done C - done D - done E - done F - done G - done H - done I - done J - done K - done L - done M - done N - done O - done P - done Q - done R - done S - done T - done U - done V - done W - done X - done Y - done Z - done
Progress: Completed on 31 Jan 2010

Brainstorming proposed category map

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Beginner	unlimited	2-5 hours per person	?
Details In order to reorganise WE's category structure, we must first decide on the most appropriate design. We would like to take suggestions from anyone that is interested. If you would like to suggest a map design, create a user subpage for yourself, and draw your map there. If you would only like to suggest ideas or small chunks of structure design, use the brainstorming thread on the proposed map's talk page. Use the current category structure map as an example of how to draw yours, and please link your proposed map in the signup section of this template.				Resources Current map Proposed map WoWWiki's category structure Wikipedia's category structure
Sign up: The brainstorming thread, Jesse's proposal
Progress: The task is active, but its progress cannot be tracked.

Determining the best category structure for WikiEducator

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Beginner	unlimited	1 hour per week	?
Details When the brainstorming period is closed, WE may then begin using discussion to reach a consensus over the category structure design that will be implemented for use in this wiki. The discussion will close when it is agreed that consensus has been reached.				Resources What is consensus? Thread:Discussing! (1)
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Progress: Task not started.

Determining the administrative procedures for category implementation and administration

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Advanced	unlimited	1 hour per week	?
Details A number of questions need to be answered including but not limited to: How do we identify categories that have already been assessed by the workgroup but do not meet our recommended guidelines? (: My initial suggestion is that we create an administrative category for holding these categories, and then including a detailed description of what its issues are that need to be addressed, on its talk page. A template can be used to perform both these functions. --Jesse Groppi 21:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)) How do we address the need for a category that we are not qualified to create? (For instance, parent categories that need to be created in order to attach a user-made category to the category system, intelligently) (: I would suggest addition to the administrative category, and a note on the talk page that requests advice from the author and/or makes suggestions --Jesse Groppi 21:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)) How do we address situations in which we are unqualified to place a category within our designed category structure? (: same suggestion as above --Jesse Groppi 21:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)) How do we notify author(s) that a category suggestion is needed (the page has no categories), or to suggest that a new category be created for the project and its many subpages and the new category be listed as a subcategory in the categories currently listed on the main page. (: we should probably start with a suggestion on the talk page to include explanation about categories and links to relevant guidelines and help pages. Follow-up and friendly guidance will be critical. --Alison Snieckus 17:00, 7 November 2009 (UTC)) Should we aim to combine two categories with very similar names, which are clearly intended to represent the same topic? How do we proceed with the combining, recognizing that some members may prefer one over the other? (: For many of the current categories, style guidelines (see the proposals Use of plurals and Acronyms in titles) can be used to identify a preferred category. --Alison Snieckus 20:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)) (: WP uses a redirect template to notify a bot to reclassify the pages to the preferred category. Is this something we should develop? --Alison Snieckus 20:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)) How do we handle moving user pages from one category to its replacement? It is recognized community practice that users have full control of their own pages and others must be invited to edit. (See example at Category:Help --Alison Snieckus 02:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC) How should we handle the categories created by Template:ContentInfobox and Template:OER_Metadata? The ContentInfobox creates categories labeled with a prefix, e.g., Category:Sector:School and Category:Topic:Community. OER_Metadata is similar but doesn't use the prefix in the category name. One issue I've found is that both of these boxes are designed for placement on the main page of the resource, and that page is then auto-listed in categories according to the words the author listed in the template, which is oftentimes not the best placement, in particular for multi-page resources. WE want to devise a system of categorisation that is easy (maybe even transparent?) for resource authors but also one that supports a functional structure. --Alison Snieckus 03:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC) How should user pages be sorted within a category? (: One option would be to sort categories that contain mostly links to user pages (e.g., Category:User sp) according to user name, using the code {{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}} in the sortkey field. See relevant discussion here. Pages that contain a mix of content and user pages might be better sorted to have all of the Users listed under "U", rather than mixed in with the content pages. --Alison Snieckus 01:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)) These procedures will serve as guidelines for the ongoing work of the categories workgroup, to be included as a subpage of the main page.				Resources
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Progress: Task not started.

Implementing the proposed category map

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
High	Intermediate	1	2-5 hours	?
Details One person needs to implement the proposed category structure, creating the proper relationships or necessary new categories, as well as deleting any unnecessary categories and moving their pages to the proper ones. Is the issue in the following discussion an implementation issue? (this issue is in search of a home--moved from workgroup charter page) (: Is it necessary, for organisation purposes, to separate the categories we've already been through, but don't know enough about to categorise them properly? Adding them to a "we don't know where this goes" category would remove them from the uncategorised categories special page, allowing us to remain focused on what we haven't already addressed. --Jesse Groppi 17:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)) (: I think I see the point of this. In addition, we need a way of keeping track of what we've done. If we've been through a category and don't know how to categorize it, we should indicate somewhere (a workpage that lists current categorization work) what the trouble is. Maybe this topic is part of specifying procedures for the implementation of categories.--Alison Snieckus 14:08, 9 October 2009 (UTC))				Resources The discussion
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Progress: Task not started.

Categorise pages

Priority	Skill level	No. of Persons	Suggested time commitment	Deadline
Unknown	Unknown
Details Whether or not this effort will categorise all pages is dependent on the outcome of the current proposed style guideline: all pages categorised				Resources
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Progress: Under discussion