Project: WhatisaProject
Parent: CLAWnetProject?
Maintainer: d@vid
Description: a wishlist is the discussion base for a project -
generally it is the more important of the two; see proposal on
WhatisaProject and comment here, or get going with your own
wishlists on CLAWnetWishlist? and OfflineWishlist
I can't stop thinking! is this a workable schema for a wiki? the
idea is that content and comments are clearly seperated, with
comments running like a blog or discussion forum (without the
neat interface... hmmm...)
for "just an idea" schemes (with no proposal, nothing more than
"why don't we have a Lovecraft Day?") you can just run a wishlist
until someone gets the initiative to actually do something (and
presumably start a project page)
now that I've been setting all this up I haven't managed to do much in terms of actual wishlists; I've seeded my favourite ideas on CLAWnetWishlist? and OfflineWishlist though (see how easy it is? :)
The multiple header system seems needlessly complicated. I don't think the structure is all that intuitive - and it would generate an enormous number of unnecessary pages. It is not necessary to have two separate pages for each project to ensure that Official Content and random commentary are separated - this can be achieved by splitting each "project" page in half with a divider. The top half can be for content and the bottom half for comments.
I think that a simpler way to keep track of all this is to keep a Wishlist page (and any other useful index pages), and make each page a list of projects with entries in this format:
Related projects can be grouped under headings - for example, everything related to CLAWmarks can be grouped together.
you want this to be easy? okay, I guess :)
I wasn't sure what is the norm for WikiUsers?, I originally had a one-page scheme but thought it may be confusing -- will amend WhatisaProject when I have a moment (hmmm... or delete WhatisaProject and stick content at the top here...)
I have revised my original idea somewhat... I don't think that there's much sense in having a page that indexes projects, as such. I mean, what is a project? It is a thing that people are working on for other people... but this entire Wiki is about things that people are doing. For example, there already is a page about things that are being done with CLAWmarks? - it's called "CLAWmarks". Similarly there are pages for roleplaying, wargaming, larps, people's homemade systems, etc. I don't think it makes sense to make special "project" pages for these topics - I think that we should rather revise existing pages to include all available information and make room for comments, and only make new pages when no appropriate page exists.
I do think there should be a Suggestions page where people can put up suggestions about things that there aren't pages for. Once the suggestion gets put into operation, it should get its own page on the Wiki (indexed by subject on the existing contents page in the normal way) and get taken off the suggestion list.
I do think a simple layout without additional structure is the way to go. Headers are all very well if there's a handy interface which handles them, but if you have to maintain them manually, they rapidly become a pain... and in this case I don't see the necessity for the additional complexity. We don't need that many indices.
Later: I have converted the layout of my original Suggestions page to demonstrate my idea.