Site Organization

Site Organization

Content is organized as a shallow hierarchy, moving from broad generalized domains of organizational concern to operational areas within a domain (and potentially, an intervening sub-area) – all the way down to the level of individual tools (one per page).

• Domain →
  • Operational Area →
    • Operational Sub-area →
      • Task →
        • Candidate Tool

Relations to Wiki Categories

In Wiki-speak each of these levels is simply a page category. The left-hand navigation panel mirrors this category hierarchy. Top-level entries — such as Operations or Communications — link to domain-level Wiki category pages and are maintained by our site administrators.

Below the domain level (i.e., below the top level), categories can be added by any site user as needed (but note site admins might roll your proposed category into an existing one or rename it.)

To assign a page to a category, place the following tag near the bottom of the page’s wikitext, replacing CategoryName with the exact category name (spaces allowed; case-sensitive):

[[Category:CategoryName]]

A page can belong to more than one category — add one tag per line. The New Submission form handles this automatically via the Category tree selector.

Guidelines for New Category Additions

Short Names

Keep the name under three words (ideally two, as the side panel nav tree might start word wrapping or exhibiting other rendering issues.)

Check for Dups

Verify there is no similar category before you add a new one.

Task Level Category Rules

Each Task should be a short phrase indicating a concrete action undertaken by technicians in service of either special projects, or ongoing operations.

Tasks can be associated with more than one recommended tool. On any tool page we might have optional discussion of why that tool was selected over rejected alternatives, together with a discussion of those alternatives. But as soon as we start accumulating more than one viable candidate for a task, each one should not only get its own page. But we should create a page ‘Rejected Alternatives’ at the level of the immediate parent Task of the page that is now joined by its new sibling pages.