Information Systems:uniKB Project Notes

Content Organization

Mediawiki is an unstructured wiki, meaning that pages are stored at the same level in the database. While the wiki is functionally unstructured, presentation of content (navigating through the wiki) is left to user. One option is to create pages (i.e. articles) and subpages that purely contain links and impose structure that way (i.e. you can only travel down the roads you see in front of you). However, this leads to static navigation pages that don't adapt to changes. For example:

• Drugs
  • Over-the-counter drugs
    • Tylenol
  • Prescription drugs
    • Xanax
    • Sildenafil

If you then wanted to create a new navigation page Generic drugs under Prescription drugs, you would have to move all the links manually.

The smarter way is to use categories.

Developing best practices for categorization

Note: This is written in an instructive tone with the intent that if a manager or content administrator is simply to follow these rules, the process of categorization will become self-explaining/self-guiding. The emphasis should be on content input; categorization is ever-evolving after the fact.

• Think of categories as topics or tags and devise some initial categories to get you started.
• Categories are functionally non-hierarchical, but you can present them hierarchically. To a page, a category is just a tag. To a user, they can navigate to a page through nested categories.
• The way to present categories in a hierarchy is to nest or subcategorize the categories themselves. However, it should be stressed again that this does not functionally place the category and it's linked pages under the category. That concept is purely related to user experience / user navigation.
• Your department is a category. In terms of presentational/navigational hierarchy, this is the root node which the stems branch out. Therefore, nest your general categories under your department category.
• Use detailed page names. Pages can be reached directly through search and through many navigation paths of varying lengths. A page is not just the pond at the end of the trail. It's the pond you can teleport to, fly over and fall into, and even be well within prior to you realizing it's a pond. Detailed page names should provide context while still being titular in character i.e. not "Page that explains
• Do not categorize content articles with