Couple more category extensions to try

[Tim Slagle]

I was reading through the Category Extensions page:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Category_extensions
and found a couple that might be worth trying.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryBreadcrumb
Prints a line at the top of the page showing your path in categories
to the current page. Makes it easier to know where you are and look
at other pages in related categories.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:NiceCategoryList2
Prints a category tree in a more compact format, might be nicer to use
than CategoryTree where you have to click to open the sub-categories

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategorySortHeaders
Lets you sort and group pages by something besides the first letter of
the title, would let us group meeting minutes by year for example.

It's hard to know how they look and work from these writeups, I think
we'd just have to install them and try them out to see if they are
okay.

I wish there was an extension to let you move a page contents and
history into the corresponding Category: page. Right now I am cutting
and pasting, which works okay but doesn't preserve the edit history.
(It is still there in the redirection page but not as easy to see and
use).
--Tim

[Nick Mapsy]

That all sounds good.

Can you not Move a page to a Category: page? Like, click the "Move" tab when you're on "HacDC Spaceblimp" and enter "Category:Spaceblimp" as the new title? I'm afraid to try it myself, so I don't know if it gives an error or something when you hit submit.

Nick

[ITechGeek]

When you move a page, it does move the history.

http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php?title=Annual_Meeting_2009&action=history

[Tim Slagle]

That's right, you get an error message when you try to move to a Category page.   I don't see why this shouldn't work since the Category page works like any other.
Makes me think that ITG's way of including using a template but excluding the Category label might have been the way to go after all.
--Tim

[ITechGeek]

No, I included code in the page not to include the template if the
page was included in another page.

[Tim Slagle]

Yeah, the [[Category:Spaceblimp]] tag was in the template so it got excluded when the main HacDC_Spaceblimp page got included in Category:Spaceblimp.  That prevented Category:Spaceblimp from showing up in its own list of pages.  Anyway, it works and preserves the history, also makes it easier to move in the future if the outline changes.

See http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Category:Spaceblimp for an example, it includes the actual main Spaceblimp page.

--Tim

[Nick Mapsy]

Huh. That looks great, and I like the effort to keep the history & everything, but that makes it so when you go to edit "Category:Spaceblimp", you'll just see this confusing blank page with just {{:HacDC Spaceblimp}}. So basically "HacDC Spaceblimp" is still the main article instead of "Category:Spaceblimp".

If there's no other way, would it be so bad to just copy/paste, and just have a single break in the page history? Add a comment to your edit telling people "For older history, see [[HacDC Spaceblimp]]". Then it'll be easy to follow for anyone looking into the page history.

Nick

[Tim Slagle]

Well, we don't really have to make the Category: page the main page for the project if one already exists.  We could just put a link on it in that says: Main Page: [[Project Main Page]].  With some of the Category extensions I listed earlier, you can include an auto-generated Category page index on the project's main page.  That might look better than the Category: page anyway.

--Tim

[Nick Mapsy]

Okay, well then maybe that'd be best, if we just have a normal, non-Category: article for the topic, but add an automatically-updating list of subpages at the bottom. I'd just like there to be one, canonical article for each topic, and for users to be able to get there by descending the tree from the main page.

Summary: So the canonical page for the spaceblimp should be "HacDC Spaceblimp", not "Category:Spaceblimp". And at the bottom of "HacDC Spaceblimp" there should be an auto-generated list of every page in Category:Spaceblimp.

That sound good?

Nick

[Tim Slagle]

So right now there are examples of doing it all three ways in the current wiki:

1. Copy/paste main page into Category: page and redirect from former main page

  http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Category:Byzantium

2. Include main page as template in Category: page and use <noinclude> to prevent double listing

  http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Category:Spaceblimp

3. Create new Category: page that links to existing main page and add auto-generated index at end of current main page

  http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/Category:Occupancy_Sensor (don't have auto-generated index extension yet)

I don't think we need to change them all to be consistent at this point.  Maybe we can live with them for a while and see what works best?

--Tim

[Nick Mapsy]

Obviously I prefer the third option, but I can go with trying them all out for a while, so that's cool.