Re: [Libreplanet-dev] Fwd: fsf groups extension patch

[John Sullivan]

I'm not trying to ban people from using subpages. They can if they want,
as Manchester has. I don't want to go very far in telling groups how to
organize their specific pages. But I think from what I've seen that they
are not the best way for us to approach organizing the entire wiki. I
was also advised to this effect by a few very experienced mediawiki
people during the conference. Wikipedia, for example, doesn't make much
use of them, does it? It relies on categories, and Semantic Mediawiki
provides some really cool stuff to embed query results in pages that
will let us easily list intersections of categories. 

The subpages from the LP meeting that you are pointing to were largely
created by me, and I instantly regretted doing that, because they caused
problems with the database, and were generally much longer and more
unwieldy than just using a combination of categories, subcategories, and
more specific names. The others that were created from the conference
were largely as a result of seeing the initial examples that I created;
so I don't think pointing to them is a good example. The distinction you
are creating between admin and users is false.

>
> So, the first time Libre Planet used this wiki to organize a meeting, there 
> were people who instinctively used subpages because the content suggested it. 
> When you look at the LibrePlanet2009 pages, you see an organized arrangement 
> of content and a flow of information from the most general at the top page, 
> to specific detail at the bottom subpages.
>

It wasn't instinctive, it was largely at my direction, and it caused a
lot of problems :).

I'm also not saying we won't install your Subpages stuff. If groups are
using them (and Manchester is), then it makes sense to support that use.

-- 
John Sullivan
Manager of Operations
GPG Key: AE8600B6