List of Existing Workgroups?
Is there one? (i.e. so that one can first check that an existing work group is not already working on the policy/guideline in mind)
The WikiEducator:Community_Portal includes a listing of active Community Workgroups, also we've created Category:Workgroups that provides a link to all Workgroups. (I noticed that there is a Workgroup on the active list that's not in the category. I will go add it.)
Great! Thanks :-).
Another thought: is it possible to search the Workgroup: namespace only? It should be possible by unchecking "(Main)" and checking "Workgroup" at the foot of a search result page (such as this]), but the "Workgroup" namespace is not listed?
Agreed. I'm a beginner at all of this. Here's how WP explains their namespaces:
A Wikipedia namespace is a set of Wikipedia pages whose names begin with a particular prefix recognized by the MediaWiki software (followed by a colon), or in the case of the main namespace have no such prefix.
So, could it be that the Workgroup: namespace is not listed in the search box because it's not being recognized by MediaWiki?? There are other pages beginning with a phrase followed by a colon that are not listed in the search box (e.g., LearningDesign). How do we decide what namespaces to maintain?
Workgroup:Technology_policy lists one of their objectives as: "Propose procedures for Community-initiated suggestions for technology related decisions." How to handle namespaces is probably one of these procedures. Not sure how a WE member would bring this up to the group.
In order for a prefix (xxxx:) to be recognised by the software, it needs to be added to the server file, and thus it becomes a namespace that is searchable, and pages are filed automatically into the namespace when created with a title that starts with the prefix. "Workgroup:" is actually what would be called a "pseudo-namespace" which means it resembles a namespace and provides the identification properties a member would recognise, however it does not have the functionality. See this definition by MediaWiki.
Pages with the "Workgroup:" prefix are actually in the main namespace (the one without a prefix), and "Workgroup:" is actually part of the title. This means that methods of dropping the namespace from being displayed or used in sort keys (such as a preceding colon or a vertical bar) do not work, and one has to manually indicate a sort key or display text in order to do so. It also means that in order to search only among pages that are "in" the pseudo-namespace, one should do something like include "Workgroup:" in the search parameters.
