Project Redcap:Administration: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:59, 4 August 2012

This page is for administrative discussions among the site contributors.

Project Status & Plans

Updated 2010-03-25

We are preparing for a permanent merger with the Project: Redcap site. The new site will be called Project: Redcap, but it will have all the contents of this site (HermesWeb).

Pitt is planning to implement and test a software upgrade before we merge the sites. Andrew Gronosky will be shifting his efforts from content creation toward organization.

Andrew is also working on getting the writers guidelines page and other project-related pages into more useful shape.

Getting Involved

In order to get a site added here, you don't have to edit the pages yourself. You can contact Andrew, and ask him to post material for you.

If you do have an interest in editing pages yourself, you are welcome to do so. You might want to experiment in the sandbox to get a feel for how editing works.

Contributing does not require you to open an account or join the mailing list. We have a guest accounts that occasional contributors can use. If you want to contribute regularly, using your own account just makes your contributions more visible.

E-Mail List

We have an e-mail list that is actively used by team members to plan and discuss the development of this site. To join, send e-mail to %%mlm at lists dot ekkaia dot org%% with the words __subscribe hermesweb__ in the subject line.

Design Questions

There are a number of design questions, articulated by Pitt on the mailing list, that we ought to keep in mind. It will take time and consensus-building to fully settle all of these. For now, the discussion is taking place on the Wiki.

Scope

Basically, what is the site about? What kinds of content do we want to include or exclude?

Template:Quote

I think we all have ideas of what the scope should be -- it's just that, at present, we all probably have different ideas. ;-) My own opinion is that the scope should encompass two things:

Providing findable links to as much Ars Magica material as possible. That is the original mission of Project: Redcap and the community needs a site that does that job.
Being an encyclopedia of the canon, current and old. This is the dictionary idea Pitt discussed above.

Fan-created content is welcome, but it is not our primary mission to host it. For my part I am more interested in linking to fan content than in hosting it. That said, if someone wants to put fan content here in order to make it easier to find (and to give it a wider audience), I see no reason to discourage him/her.

Threshold/Transition (between Scope and Namespace & Nomenclature)

Agreed, this is the way most of our pages ought to be designed. The Writers Guidelines page (or something like it) should be updated to express this idea.

There will be a few exceptions, for lengthy articles or pages where it makes sense to collect together a large amount of information. For example, most of our topic pages such as Welcome to Ars Magica and Order of Hermes will be big. But, 90% of our articles should be short -- a few paragraphs with some links and references.

Namespace & Nomenclature

-* dilemma, where * is one of the twelve Hermetic houses, and eventually created a reasonable bijective mapping of all information involved, yielding 3 times 12 distinctive pages.

What I'm trying to say is that, under the premise of a wiki, it is imperative to have a clearly structured nomenclature, one that more or less stands for itself, and one that can be used to comfortably retrieve the information contained in it. A wiki is not only about "use it, share it, contribute" - we could have that with a forum as well. It is also about structure.}}

I think the page categories help to make the information discoverable. Nomenclature in general is something that we should address on the "How to Use this Site" page, which doesn't yet exist.

In addition to the \{founder,house,member\}-* dilemma, I think nomenclature issues occur in the titles of Ars Magica supplements: for instance, there are two supplements titled Covenants (one for 5th Edition and one for 2nd). We should straighten it out with a consistent solution. Pitt, I think you have more experience with this than I do. Can you make any specific suggestions?

Navigation

Template:Quote

The two-action limit makes sense and is consistent with what theory I've read about usability. This is why it is better in some cases to have big, complicated pages with many related things in one place. (The table of contents feature is important in that case).

It seems to me that we have two sorts of categories: categories that apply to things within the game world (such as Domus Magnae, the Hermetic Houses, etc.) and categories that matter to gamers (published books, authors, editions, "fluff" vs. "crunch").

So I'd welcome a bit more thought and discussion about categories and nomenclature, and it would be good to capture that discussion on a page somewhere.

=== Legacy Page ===The history of this page before August 6, 2010 is archived at Legacy:administration

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 This page is for administrative discussions among the site contributors.
-{{toc}}
-= Project Status & Plans
+==  Project Status & Plans ==
 Updated 2010-03-25
-We are preparing for a permanent merger with the [[http://www.redcap.org/ | Project: Redcap]] site.  The new site will be called Project: Redcap, but it will have all the contents of this site (HermesWeb).
+We are preparing for a permanent merger with the [http://www.redcap.org/   Project: Redcap] site.  The new site will be called Project: Redcap, but it will have all the contents of this site (HermesWeb).
 Pitt is planning to implement and test a software upgrade before we merge the sites.  [[Andrew Gronosky]] will be shifting his efforts from content creation toward organization.
@@ Line 14: / Line 13: @@
 Andrew is also working on getting the [[writers guidelines]] page and other project-related pages into more useful shape.
-= Getting Involved
+==  Getting Involved ==
 In order to get a site added here, you don't have to edit the pages yourself.  You can [[contact]] Andrew, and ask him to post material for you.
@@ Line 22: / Line 20: @@
 [[Contributing]] does not require you to open an account or join the mailing list.  We have a guest accounts that occasional contributors can use.  If you want to contribute regularly, using your own account just makes your contributions more visible.
-= E-Mail List
+==  E-Mail List ==
 We have an e-mail list that is actively used by team members to plan and discuss the development of this site.  To join, send e-mail to %%mlm at lists dot ekkaia dot org%% with the words __subscribe hermesweb__ in the subject line.
-= Design Questions
+==  Design Questions ==
 There are a number of design questions, articulated by Pitt on the mailing list, that we ought to keep in mind.  It will take time and consensus-building to fully settle all of these.  For now, the discussion is taking place on the Wiki.
-== Scope
+===  Scope ===
 Basically, what is the site about?  What kinds of content do we want to include or exclude?
@@ Line 45: / Line 40: @@
 Fan-created content is welcome, but it is not our primary mission to host it.  For my part I am more interested in linking to fan content than in hosting it.  That said, if someone wants to put fan content here in order to make it easier to find (and to give it a wider audience), I see no reason to discourage him/her.
-{{cite|Andrew G.}}
-== Threshold/Transition (between Scope and Namespace & Nomenclature)
-{{quote|I'm persistent. I'd like to revisit the dictionary thought. A wiki page is supposed to be expressed by its name, that is, the name it is referred to by other pages. There are numerous exceptions regarding feature-rich topics, but my general preference is to keep the average page relatively short, include links to other pages, and leave the more extensive sub topics to the linked pages to explain - divide et impera, by recursion. If, for example, I write an article about Troupe-Style Play, and want to explain the differences to a traditional, competitive GM vs. players scenario, I'd probably mention the role of the story guide and players, but any extensive coverage of the story guide would be a waste of time. Rather, the story guide deserves his own page, which can be easily maintained and extended, and, more importantly, linked by other pages.}}
+===  Threshold/Transition (between Scope and Namespace & Nomenclature) ===
 Agreed, this is the way most of our pages ought to be designed.  The [[Writers Guidelines]] page (or something like it) should be updated to express this idea.
@@ Line 55: / Line 49: @@
 There will be a few exceptions, for lengthy articles or pages where it makes sense to collect together a large amount of information.  For example, most of our topic pages such as [[Welcome to Ars Magica]] and [[Order of Hermes]] will be big.  But, 90% of our articles should be short -- a few paragraphs with some links and references.
-{{cite| Andrew G.}}
-== Namespace & Nomenclature
-{{quote|In the context of a dictionary, any ambiguity caused by an undefined scope is likely to lead to a confusingly arranged archipelago of information whose assignment of contents is not only random at best, but whose nodes are also insufficiently accessible by the visitor who wants to find and read them. I'd like to note that we found a pretty good solution for the \{founder,house,member\}-* dilemma, where * is one of the twelve Hermetic houses, and eventually created a reasonable bijective mapping of all information involved, yielding 3 times 12 distinctive pages.
+===  Namespace & Nomenclature ===
+-* dilemma, where * is one of the twelve Hermetic houses, and eventually created a reasonable bijective mapping of all information involved, yielding 3 times 12 distinctive pages.
 What I'm trying to say is that, under the premise of a wiki, it is imperative to have a clearly structured nomenclature, one that more or less stands for itself, and one that can be used to comfortably retrieve the information contained in it. A wiki is not only about "use it, share it, contribute" - we could have that with a forum as well. It is also about structure.}}
@@ Line 67: / Line 60: @@
 In addition to the \{founder,house,member\}-* dilemma, I think nomenclature issues occur in the titles of Ars Magica supplements: for instance, there are two supplements titled ''Covenants'' (one for 5th Edition and one for 2nd).  We should straighten it out with a consistent solution.  Pitt, I think you have more experience with this than I do.  Can you make any specific suggestions?
-{{cite|Andrew G.}}
-== Navigation
+===  Navigation ===
 {{quote|When I'm consulted to design navigational mechanisms of web sites, I usually try to go for a 2-action limit, meaning that it must not take a visitor more than two actions to find what he's looking for, provided that
@@ Line 88: / Line 80: @@
 So I'd welcome a bit more thought and discussion about categories and nomenclature, and it would be good to capture that discussion on a page somewhere.
-{{cite|Andrew G.}}
-== Legacy Page ==
+===  Legacy Page  ===The history of this page before August 6, 2010 is archived at [[Legacy:administration]]
-The history of this page before August 6, 2010 is archived at [[Legacy:administration]]
 [[Category:Project_Redcap]]