User talk:Teratornis/Index

{{talkheader no user}}

This will be a subpage in which I would like to do for science, rationality, atheism, etc., what the Editor's index to Wikipedia does for Wikipedia editors. In other words, I want to build an index like that one. See the talk page for some of my interactions with the primary author of that index. He incorporated several of my suggestions.

If you have any comments or questions about this page, ask them below. I won't edit your comments, but I may add headings and change indenting if this page gets messy. --Teratornis 03:01, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

• All my talk pages

Index to content, or an editor's index?

So this is an index? (Hey, it's obvious I know, but it's an introduction to my question.) Is this intended to be an index for the whole site or for the technical side of the site? I ask because the sample WP index seems to be for technical stuff. Will items add themselves automatically to the index? Cheers. .-) --Bob^{'s your uncle} 13:56, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

The Editor's index to Wikipedia is indeed for editors; it indexes a large amount of "meta" or "project" information - the procedural know-how an editor needs to build a wiki like Wikipedia (or RationalWiki, although some details would differ). On RationalWiki there appears to be far less of that kind of how-to content (just yet), I suppose because RationalWiki is still fairly new, a lot of RationalWiki editors presumably learned wiki editing elsewhere, and they haven't RWified all the how-to knowledge with the local "flava." Thus I will initially index article content along with project content, and see how that looks. If the two don't sit well together, we can split them into two different index pages. Since RationalWiki has a much narrower topical focus than Wikipedia, we don't need nearly as many how-to pages here, so they might not clutter up a combined index too terribly. The picture will get clearer, of course, as the index takes shape.

As to how items get on the index, unfortunately there is no automatic method yet. (I say "yet" because at the risk of launching into another hideously long digression, I did discuss that with John Broughton, the author of the Editor's index to Wikipedia. It would be nice if MediaWiki had indexing tags similar to those in DocBook, but alas, it does not, and introducing them would probably require writing a MediaWiki extension, and that's one of the wiki adventures I haven't gotten to yet. But oh, I certainly do want to take a stab at that some day.) So, putting items on the index requires good old fashioned human grunt work, unlike the category pages MediaWiki automatically builds for us from the category tags we add to articles.

On the plus side, even though page content on a wiki changes a lot, the pages themselves tend to be fairly stable, in the sense that if an article doesn't get deleted fairly quickly, it usually sticks around for quite a while, so once we add a link to the index, the link doesn't usually rot too quickly. And of course, on a wiki lots of people can pull together, so as more people use an index page and like what they see, the more who will probably start adding to it and helping to maintain it. People who see how the index works might say, "Oh, I know an article link that should go right here." As with everything else on a wiki, an index will be as good (or as bad) as the users decide to make it. I'll do what I can to create a solid self-documenting starting index, and see how people react.

OK, there is one type of index information we could automate a little. And that would be navigation templates. If we create navigation templates, we can stick them right onto the index (I can't show you an example, because I only have this feature on my corporate wikis that are hiding behind firewalls; we don't have it on the Wikipedia index - so you'll just have to believe me when I tell you the navigation templates can look pretty good on an index). The same navigation templates would appear at the bottom of articles, so when someone updates a template, the change would appear in all instances of the template (in articles, and in the index).

Thanks for your interest, and for giving me a good excuse to explain this project a little more. --Teratornis 23:47, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Do we need an index?

The index proposed would seem to be rather superfluous to our requirements - devised on wp as an editor's directory it covers all aspects of wiki editing and could just be given as a wikilink for anyone who needs it. A great many of the technical entries there apply just as wel here.

We do not (I think) want to look like a subset of wp, apart from anything else, a lot of our founders originally joined cp because they didn't like wp's perceived outlook, admittedly we're a tad disorganised - but that's largely an accurate reflection of our ad hoc way of growing. We are not an encyclopædia and make no pretence of being so, that is why we restrict interwiki links - anyone wanting to research material in other wikis should start there.

If I might make a suggestion, surely a better way of making a useful site index would involve automation using dpl and keywords within articles, I tried to do something like this but my dpl skills failed me. You (Teratornis) seem to have a programmer's leaning and would be able to do something surely. (I find the dpl 'help' pages almost impenetrable)

Susan^{talk to me} 02:25, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

I apologize for my slow response. I wish MediaWiki automatically notified me of new messages on talk pages of my user subpages as it does for new messages on my talk page, but unfortunately it does not. Thus I may not notice a new message on a talk page such as this for some time (and also, RationalWiki is just one of the things I have going on, so I might not immediately respond even to new messages on my primary talk page for a while).

I also wish to apologize for getting off on the completely wrong foot with you. I admit I am not the easiest person to get along with, and I rub some people the wrong way. I mentioned as much on my user page in hopes of forewarning people. However, while lots of people find me bothersome, nobody presents a convincing case that I am irrational. Which is to say, I evaluate every claim on the basis of objective evidence; I welcome correction; I don't hold grudges; I don't call people silly names, no matter what they call me (Terapoopyhead? I like it); I invite everyone to say whatever they think I need to hear - it won't hurt my feelings, and I will try my best to analyze everything I hear using the tools of critical thinking. I don't believe everybody has to like everybody else to function constructively toward a shared goal (after all, in real life lots of people make decent money by working with some people they don't especially like), but if my presence here is somehow unbearable for people, causing my net impact to be unconstructive, then I will happily apologize to the community, chalk it up to experience, and go elsewhere. I've advised dozens of disgruntled editors on the Wikipedia Help desk to try another wiki, and rest assured I know when to take my own advice. I had wondered whether RationalWiki actually would value rational discourse, rather than the tiresomely typical ingroup/outgroup stuff that dominates our planet, and I had to test that hypothesis.

To the issue: I hadn't heard of metawikipedia:Help:DPL before; thanks for the information. That's what I like about wikis, there is always more to learn. (I assume that's what you mean by dpl; if I guessed incorrectly, please set me straight.) Extension:DynamicPageList looks pretty complicated, so I will need some time to understand it. Just now I cannot begin to comment on whether it obviates a manually-edited index. (I'm one of those oddly cautious people who likes to avoid expressing opinions on subjects until I know something about them.) Special:Version says it's running on RationalWiki, so perhaps I can learn to use it here. I will also mention it to wp:User:John Broughton to extend our earlier discussion about automatic indexing, and see if he knows anything about it. (wp:Special:Version does not show DynamicPageList running on Wikipedia (which seems a bit strange), so John wouldn't have used it there, but he may have used it elsewhere.)

As far as whether "we" need an index, that's a good question, and one that would be easier to answer once we have a working example to try, because in the absence of a working example, the discussion risks becoming an abstract battle of conflicting untestable hunches. Different people like different things. Some people like to search, others like to browse, and so on. Then there are the thousands of anonymous strangers browsing through, and who can guess what they prefer? One size does not fit all. I wouldn't dream of imposing a method on someone if they didn't like it, or removing any existing method. I'm definitely not in the deletionist school; any new contribution should slide into the gaps between what already exists, and remain easy for people to ignore if they don't need it. Although I am not a physician, I think every technology should first, do no harm. I hadn't imagined that building an index for my own use first, and then inviting others to try it and comment, would trouble anyone else, but evidently it has.

I confess, I didn't come to RationalWiki expecting I would need to justify the tools I'm building in "my" own userspace; I thought I had read enough of the site policy to see that userspace is for users and is relatively inviolate (provided they don't go out of their way to be disruptive). After seeing the numerous accolades accorded to the Editor's index to Wikipedia, as well as the half-dozen barnstars I received by applying the index to Help desk questions, I thought the value of the technology was about as plainly obvious as the evidence for an ancient Earth. It hadn't occurred to me someone would look at that page and not think they wanted a similar feature on their own wiki. But then again, until I got to RationalWiki, none of the 1000+ wiki users I've interacted with in the past 18 months had disparaged wikilinks either. I was under the impression that people edit on wikis (as opposed to blogs and other methods) in part because of the ease of linking, and we just link to whatever Web page best describes the meaning we want to convey with a word, and avoid getting hung up on Not invented here. I guess that shows how little I know. --Teratornis 14:45, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

Teratornis, I, for one, am glad you're with us. Furthermore, from a number of comments that have appeared elsewhere I am not alone in this. Frankly, I'm really quite impressed that you're still plugging on.--Bob^{bing for apples} 15:07, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for your support. I truly am sorry for unwittingly pissing so many people off. That was never my intent. (Rational people do not get pissed off, at least not until their lives are at stake, or they run into someone who steadfastly refuses to consider rational arguments, so I mistakenly assumed too much from the sitename.) RationalWiki works quite a bit differently than the other dozen or so wikis I've used. (For example, on Wikipedia, which I had previously thought to be one of the most persnickety wikis imaginable, there is fairly wide latitude for experimenting in userspace with building tools and so on.) Perhaps if I don't get hounded off of here, I could attempt to better document some of those differences, to avoid misleading other newcomers who must surely follow, who might similarly make the incorrect "looks like, therefore, must work like" assumption. My outsider's perspective might help illuminate some of the do's and don'ts that insiders have come to take for granted and might not think to elaborate for the clueless.

Also, mild insults don't bother me in the least. My background includes years on Usenet (and a goatstar or whatever you call the generic meaningless award here goes to the first sleuth who determines my identity there) in which I received megabytes of flames that refined my sangfroid in a veritable fiery furnace. By comparison to the names I have been called by some people with a real knack for finding the "soul-killing diss," "Terapoopyhead" reads to me like a term of endearment; I might even make it my nickname. Being liked has never been my goal; being correct is. Thus the one insult that can potentially disturb me would be for someone to call me irrational, as in impugning my capacity for critical thinking. However, when that happens, and the criticism turns out to be correct, then it isn't negative at all; it's helpful, as in helping me become more aware of my personal tendency to lapse into fallacies, and then I can do that a little less.

For example, obviously I didn't lurk long enough here before I made my first edits, although I did read the policies, and I tried hard to explain what I wanted to do at every step, so it wouldn't appear I was trying to undercut anyone. That is one item that could stand to be documented better for newbs. If it's possible for everyone to take a deep breath, before crucifying me for my lack of mainspace article edits or whatever, not that I mind being crucified as it only plays to my messiah complex, try to bear in mind that I haven't been here even two weeks. Before I go plowing into mainspace, where edits can really get disruptive, I want to know exactly what I'm doing. I feel that by the time I finish building my index (for my use initially), I should have a better feel for RationalWiki and what it wants. Of course I'm open to being shown wrong at any time.

And to anyone who isn't interested in all this navel-gazing, I can hardly blame you; but why read it if you don't like it? It's not like I'm strapping people to chairs and taping their eyelids open. --Teratornis 15:50, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

the page in question

Offers nothing but you masturbating. As far as I can see. human 21:33, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

Yes, what is visible now isn't much, just the barest skeleton. I could flesh it out faster if I had a clear go-ahead to proceed, but I don't want to overstep my mandate, and it appears I don't have one. My intent was just to build a tool initially for my own use in what the site policy led me to believe was "my" userspace (although I understand the site administrators can kick me off at any time, so I don't presume to "own" anything here). Building the index will take a while because MediaWiki has no built-in technology that does exactly the same job (as far as I know, yet - see above for discussion about the DPL extension that I need to investigate; maybe DPL does what I need and I can skip the manual index project, but I don't know that yet). Later, once I actually have something, other people can try it and tell me if they think it sucks or not. If some, many, or all other people don't want to use it, that's no skin off my nose, but I'd like to think we are all rational enough not to presume we know what thousands of anonymous strangers browsing through might prefer - why not wait for them to tell us by voting with their clicks?

I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest by using the word "masturbating." To me, "masturbating" carries no negative connotations, it's more of a neutral descriptor. An individual's indulgence in such a thoroughly harmless and enjoyable recreational activity has no impact on anyone else; it neither helps nor harms another person, not even their sex partners, as most people have plenty to go around, so to speak. My embryonic index tool is not nearly complete enough to help anyone else yet (not even me), but I haven't seen how it's hurting anyone, so your characterization looks perfectly apt and I agree with it completely.

While I am aware that almost everyone masturbates, especially almost everyone who spends much time at a computer, I can't begin to imagine why so many people seem to feel ashamed of it. Bonobos do it without shame, right in front of primatologists. But I digress, as by now you have come to expect. --Teratornis 15:16, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, sorry about the attitude problem on my part. Anyway, I suspect you might hit paydirt with the dpl stuff Susan told you about. Have you seen how the "TOC" thing on the main page works, yet? And the template that generates it? By using "best of" categories, we end up with an automatically generated, sorted index (of sorts). If all our various technical files were handled similarly, it might work there, too. Of course, if they were all simply in one unique category, the cat listing would be all that was needed. And, of course, as you observed, your user space is totally your playground. See the horror show random color main page thing I made, for example. Everyone hated it, of course. I don't blame them! I couldn't figure out a way to make the borders a darker version of the same color picked for the backgrounds of each section, even. So as far as useful links and tools, etc., people will surely appreciate good stuff, even if you only built it for your own purposes. I made an html file I keep on my own machine that has a google search box, a wp searchbox, and a handful of useful rw links (all cats, all templates, all files, etc.) so I can get around quickly, with less clicking. Anyway, hope what you are doing turns out well. I'll post a quick note on your talk page so you know you have a comment here. It would be cool if that was automatic, eh? Hmmm - one thing you could do is to transclude all your sub-talk pages to your main one, you'd at least see any changed there, even if the software wouldn't alert you. You'd also see changes on your watchlist, though that isn't always a practical nav. tool, though I tend to use it rather than recent changes to see what's going on. Bye for now, human 01:07, 20 October 2007 (EDT)