Talk:Rules/Categories

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Revision as of 11:20, 28 February 2005 by Asqueella (talk | contribs)
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This is a quick draft for the Fx/TB/Suite support part of the knowledge base. Add to/edit this tree and add your comments below. (someone should fill the TB/Suite parts)

Note: We should settle on good names for categories, since renaming them is a pain (you have to either go through all articles in a category manually or run a bot). We should also decide what categories to put a page into (see "Categorizing articles" below)

--asqueella

Category:Top level
 |
 +--Category:Intoduction (to mozilla apps; for Intro_:_... pages. Need a better name, perhaps "General"?)
 +--Category:General concepts (pages like CSS or User agent go here)
 |
 +--Category:Firefox
 |   +--Category:Firefox issues
 |   |   +--Category:Websites issues (also subcategory of Category:Mozilla issues)
 |   |   +--Category:Firefox extensions issues
 |   |   +--Category:Plugins issues (for both Firefox and the Suite; maybe just "Plugins"?)
 |   |   +--Category:Firefox miscellaneous issues (do we really need this?)
 |   +--Category:Firefox general (tips and FAQs; I don't think it's a great idea to separate them)
 |   |   +--Category:Firefox basics (things like using tabs/search bar/keyword searches)
 |   |   +--Category:Firefox configuration (is this name ok?)
 |   |   |   +--Category:Firefox visual customization (?)
 |   +--Category:Migrating (Firefox) (is this a good idea?)
 |   +-- more?
 |
 +--Category:Thunderbird
 | ...
 +--Category:Mozilla Suite
 | ...

Categorizing articles

Should we put [[Category:Firefox]] (or any other category with subcategories) on all articles? Perhaps put it only on uncategorized ones - others are accessible via subcategories? If we decide to use templates as I suggested above, there's no need to put [[Category:Firefox]] on each article anymore, since the blurb is generated from template params, not from category information. That way we can keep the Category:Firefox less cluttered.

I think, though, that we should put articles about Firefox issues, both in Category:Firefox issues and more narrow subcategory. That's needed because our categorization abilities are not perfect. Same goes for other subcategories.

Any comments? --asqueella

As you say, I don't think we need to put [[Category:Firefox]] on any articles, except uncategorized ones. I see [[Category:Firefox]] merely as being a holding place for its subcategories and uncategorized articles. I would actually say that no article properly belongs to [[Category:Firefox]]; editors who are unsure where their article belongs can put it there to begin with, but that article should be refactored into an appropriate subcategory at a later date (probably by a different editor/maintainer).
On the other point, articles which can be thought of as "issues" should definitely be categorized twice, once in [[Category:Firefox issues]] and again in the appropriate semantic category. (Eg, an article on installing extensions belongs in (some subcategory of) [[Category:Firefox issues]] and also properly belongs in (some subcategory of) [[Category:Firefox extensions]]. This latter category will contain articles which are not "issues" as well as those which are. See my comments in the section above.
--Mozcerize 02:38, 28 Feb 2005 (PST)

Category pages vs. arbitrary listings pages

The proposals above are looking really good. The beauty of this approach is:
  • The user is informed from the start which applications the article applies to;
  • only one copy of the content is maintained (with the downside that editors must make more effort to make the wording of their articles more application-independent);
  • related pages are accessible via the categories which will appear at the bottom of each article;
  • you don't need to get rid of the Issues/FAQs/Tips pages (although personally I seriously dislike having both FAQs and Tips—an FAQ is just a tip or issue rephrased as a question, and so these divisions do not help the visitor find what they need). Since article titles no longer need to be product-specific, you are free to combine links in any way you see fit. The way I prefer to find information is in a table-of-contents-like manner: if I want to know about keyboard shortcuts for Firefox I would expect to visit the Firefox category, then the UI subcategory, etc. When the templates idea is implemented, I shall probably make an attempt at creating such a table-of-contents link structure, to complement (perhaps replace) the current Issues/FAQs structure.
--Mozcerize 11:19, 27 Feb 2005 (PST)
Mozcerize, please see my "Categories Tree" proposal above. I think we should sketch the categories structure before starting to implement it. asqueella
Indeed! I wasn't talking about the category structure in my post above; rather, I was talking about moving contents of Firefox : Issues-like articles into the editable part of Category:Firefox issues, at which point we can clean up (ie implement a true table-of-contents link structure to augment or replace) the subsections of the Firefox : Issues page. This is a separate issue from—although related to and possibly overlapping—the choice of categories. --Mozcerize 02:23, 28 Feb 2005 (PST)
wintogreen, Mozcerize—
When I talked about removing Firefox : Issues-like articles, I meant moving their contents into editable part of Category:Firefox issues. That way you get a "back to Issues page" for free. (The category page contains articles both categorically and alphabetically sorted, though). That's how it's done on Wikipedia sometimes. My proposal above ("Categories Tree") is to move Firefox : FAQs and Firefox : Tips to Category:Firefox general or whatever better name you can think of. Having both Tips and FAQs is just plain stupid IMO. --asqueella
So you mean that the current content (as is) of Firefox : Issues would exist at the top or bottom of Category:Firefox issues? Or do you mean that a page with the same contents, but organized differently, would be created via Categories?
I'm completely in favor of getting rid of Tips. It never has made sense to me for this kb. It worked OK at the old texturizer.net pages (now at mozilla.org/support) as a way to avoid overwhelming new users with too much techie information. It was a good idea in that context, but I don't think the kb plays the same kind of role and doesn't need that kind of scheme. Wintogreen 20:51, 27 Feb 2005 (PST)
Yes, I think asqueella means that a Category page contains two types of listing: firstly, in the editable section, a user-created organised structure of links, probably similar to (or even a direct copy of) the contents of eg. the "Firefox : FAQ" page. Underneath that would be the system-generated alphabetic list of all articles in that category. This gets us the best of both worlds: the automatic alphabetic list ensures that no article is "left out" (as used to happen in the current Firefox : FAQ" page); and we also get to implement a usage-centric description of (at least some of) the articles (as "Firefox : FAQ" currently presents) which will make it easier for the user to find the information he is looking for. (In KBs which primarily exist for support purposes, alphabetic lists alone are not ideal; the user may not know the correct phrase for the information he seeks, or there may be multiple appropriate phrases.)
--Mozcerize 02:28, 28 Feb 2005 (PST)
Right. I propose copying the contents of listing pages as it is to the top of category pages. When we get to creating subcategories, they will also be put on the category page, so user will be able to use them for navigation too.
An example: we currently have a Dev : Extensions : Example Code page that is similar to Firefox : FAQs (it's a list of pages from Category:Example code (sub)categorized manually).
I moved its contents to Category:Example code as I plan to do with other such listing pages, look at the category page to see how it's going to look like. One thing left to do is to redirect the Example Code page to the Category:Example code page.
--asqueella