Discriminating between Help: and guidelines
I've suggested on our workgroup outputs that we also work on further developing the Help:Category page. Seems like there should be a clear distinction between a help page and a guideline page, but I'm not finding any *guidance* (WP's Help:Help wasn't much help :).
In some sense both pages provide guidance, but it seems to me that the help page by nature is more descriptive and would be the first place a wikieducator would go to when looking for guidance on how to use categories. The Help:Categories page is the main resource for learning about categories and about how WE uses them.
I'm thinking the guidelines page documents the community consensus on categorisation decisions and best practices and includes very little about what categories are and the basics of how to use them.
Other thoughts on this?
I think you've got it absolutely right, Alison. In both major wikis I've had experience with, Help pages are used for things like tutorials and glossaries. Guidelines and policies are usually in what is our WikiEducator namespace. This namespace typically tells members what WE does, how WE achieves its purpose, and how to use WE.
Good, thanks. Happily I'm being well served by the wiki concept map that I've been busily building.
So, I'm thinking that the "What is a category" and "Why categories" write-ups from Jesse's earlier post to the google group should be moved to the Help:Category page (which doesn't yet include any basic explanation). These serve as a good starting point for the info that should be included there.
The explanation of categories that will go in this guidelines page will be short and sweet (and include a pointer to the help page).
And the section "the workgroup" should be deleted. I've noted that the whole post is included on the charter under "external communications".
Any disagreements?
No disagreement here.
