Category system

**CleverTangent** · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 6:15 pm Post subject: Category system

Categories, if done right, can be an extremely powerful tool for navigation. Rkcr has been working on creating categories and populating them, and I've been mainly populating categories up to this point.

It's extremely important in my opinion that we develop a coherent category tree before we begin to populate lots of categories.

I've created a flowchart for my proposed category tree; the idea is to be able to quickly and efficiently find exactly what you're looking for, without having to sift through the search function and be able to find other similar articles.

Due to the massive size of the image (1079 x 731), I'll just link to the chart:

Chart

Most of these categories exist already. However, I've proposed a few "branch" categories connecting the more specific categories to the broader ones (such as CategoryInfo and CategoryMods). I also split a few categories (such as CategoryGHDLC and CategoryRBDLC) so that desired information may be found quicker.

A great category system will have no articles in the branch categories at all. All articles should in the lowest level of the hierarchy, sort of like a giant polytomous key. The higher level categories should only contain other categories, so a user can navigate to what exactly they're looking for, starting very broad and ending very specific.

Comments? Ideas?
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Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. ~Oscar Wilde

**Eastwinn** · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 6:23 pm Post subject:

I like this proposal.

**CleverTangent** · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 6:58 pm Post subject:

I've already noticed that I've forgotten stuff on my diagram:

Under the "CategoryGuitarHeroSongs" and "CategoryRockBandSongs", I forgot to add On-Disc song categories.

Under "CategoryGuitarHero", I forgot to add "CategoryCharacters".

Regarding CategoryTechnical, I left it where it is because CategoryTechnical already exists, and contains one page: CustomSongs. I can't think of any other children for CategorySoftware, so mayby CustomSongs could be transferred to CategorySoftware.
_________________

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. ~Oscar Wilde

**rkcr** · Joined: 05 Feb 2007 Posts: 2518 Location: Minneapolis

Some critiques:

I don't think CategoryHardware should be under CategoryMods, since CategoryHardware is mostly un-modified stuff so far. CategoryTechnical doesn't necessarily denote modification, either.

Nor do I think that mods in general should be a child of Scorehero - we invent many, but that doesn't mean that conceptually we are the parent of a modification. Along the same lines, CategoryEvents probably shouldn't be under CategoryScorehero because not all events are run by Scorehero.

CategoryInfo seems to be a redundant one to me - isn't everything on a wiki info?

**CleverTangent** · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 7:27 pm Post subject:

**rkcr** · Joined: 05 Feb 2007 Posts: 2518 Location: Minneapolis

I'm not sure if we should splitting hardware down the middle at all. It's just as important in my mind to keep things simple as well as organized; I'm afraid that too much specification may prove problematic. Along those same lines, do we need separate categories for each games' songs? I'm torn on this one, since it might be useful, but on the other hand it's not like there aren't other places one can look up this information (for example, the article names on all songs already denote what game they are for...).

CategoryTechnical could probably be better suited as CategorySoftware. We could also merge CategoryUtilities into CategorySoftware. I'm not sure if this would make it too general or not.

RE Mods and events. I would think that Mods could go under games, since it's all about game modification. Events can be a category in itself for now.

CategoryGuides sounds good to me for people who start moving their guides to the wiki.

Also, one last thing, it might be worth it to get Freemind and make a mind map article of the category organization.

**tma** · Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 1414 Location: Australia

Could CategoryTechnical be used for things like information relating to how the scoring systems work, or proofing information? Or specifications on the file formats? I'm not sure that technical information on the game are all necessarily related to "software" ...