In the interest of making our library more research friendly, there is discussion about expanding the navigational aids offered to users. Currently we have:
- Disambiguation pages ("dabs") in the main namespace
- Portal pages in the portal namespace
- Index pages in the project namespace
- Category pages in the category namespace
- Author pages in the author namespace
The idea is to simplify and expand the navigational options. Below is a summary of five classes of navigational aids, the status quo for how they are handled, and the proposals made by different users. Bold indicates a departure from the status quo:
Type |
Status Quo |
Spangineer |
Bob Burkhardt, Charles Matthews |
Cmadler |
Hesperian (Commons) |
Wikipedia
|
Works about a non-person topic |
Portal |
Portal |
Portal |
Category |
Main |
Portal
|
Works about a non-author person |
Portal |
Author |
Main |
Category |
Main |
Portal
|
Works about an author |
Author |
Author |
Author |
Author |
Main |
Portal
|
Works by an author |
Author |
Author |
Author |
Author |
Main |
Portal
|
Works about a work |
Main (dabs, notes) |
Main |
Main |
Main |
Main |
Portal
|
Type |
Proposal
|
Works about a non-person topic |
Portal
|
Works about a non-author person |
Author
|
Works about an author |
Author
|
Works by an author |
Author
|
Works about a work |
Main
|
- Positive
- Works within existing framework with limited upheaval
- Negative
- Not consistent—separates non-people from non-author people.
Type |
Proposal
|
Works about a non-person topic |
Portal
|
Works about a non-author person |
Main
|
Works about an author |
Author
|
Works by an author |
Author
|
Works about a work |
Main
|
- Positive
- Intuitive: the reader will most often be sent to what he expects when he types something in to the search box
- Negative
- Not clean, because of cross namespace redirects, and moving of pages from Main to Author when a work is found by that person.
- Sacrifices pages like Charles Dickens.
Type |
Proposal
|
Works about a non-person topic |
Category
|
Works about a non-author person |
Category
|
Works about an author |
Author
|
Works by an author |
Author
|
Works about a work |
Main
|
- Positive
- Categories are standard navigational tools already; simply expand their use
- Easy to add a work to a category
- Negative
- Limited organizational options once in a category
(Move all works to new namespace, perhaps "Works")
Type |
Proposal
|
Works about a non-person topic |
Main
|
Works about a non-author person |
Main
|
Works about an author |
Main
|
Works by an author |
Main
|
Works about a work |
Main
|
- Positive
- Logically consistent
- Matches Commons structure
- Negative
- Would require massive maintenance effort
Type |
Proposal
|
Works about a non-person topic |
Portal
|
Works about a non-author person |
Portal
|
Works about an author |
Portal
|
Works by an author |
Portal
|
Works about a work |
Portal
|
- Positive
- Logically consistent
- Matches Wikipedia structure
- Negative
- Would require massive maintenance effort