MEpedia talk:Contents

How should the main page be organized?
I worry that if we add bullets to all the sections, the page will become impossibly long (I have a hard time with page scrolling...). I like the compactness of having links in paragraph form but understand it makes it hard to read. Wonder if there is a compromise? --JenB (talk) 05:51, 27 November 2015 (PST)


 * My vote would be to use wiki categories to organize everything. Analogue (talk) 00:36, 28 November 2015 (PST)


 * I agree that would be good in the long run – I think for now the purpose of the main page is just to give folks a sense of which articles they can contribute to, because 99% of the content someone might search for isn't actually here yet – of course there is so much more now that the front page may be becoming a little overwhelming and should probably be pared down. Would the idea then be to link to the category pages from the main page? If we create categories, we should probably have a discussion about what are the right categories ::--JenB (talk) 04:41, 28 November 2015 (PST)


 * Yes that's what I was thinking, front page could list/link to the categories. You've already essentially been organizing it in categories already. Analogue (talk) 15:17, 28 November 2015 (PST)

Maybe we can start a discussion here about categories? Ollie and others might be more likely to see it over here: http://my.meaction.net/local_chapters/mepedia --JenB (talk) 04:43, 28 November 2015 (PST) Actually – I will start a discussion and direct folks to this talk page.

With these decisions I think we should bear in mind it's less a case of "Should we do X?" but the question is "Should we do X or Y FIRST?". In terms of priority I think covering the key content areas and filling out stub pages is more important so the wiki becomes genuinely useful as soon as possible. I like the current home page as it's easy to see what needs doing and shows what the wiki is for, but I completely agree it will ultimately change in future and categories are likely to work well as they allow us to specify where a page goes IN that page, rather than elsewhere. In the meantime I would prefer comma-separated lists rather than bullets so the page is not unnecessarily long. Olliec (talk) 01:56, 29 November 2015 (PST)

Can I suggest that if we keep the current format (at least for now) that we add commas between items so we have "Item 1, Item 2, Item 3" rather than "Item 1 Item 2 Item 3" as it will be much clearer. At the same time we can also reorder the items alphabetically. Later we could use each section as the basis for a category. Olliec (talk) 02:25, 29 November 2015 (PST)

I agree with commas or a period. Blogs: Blog 1.Blog 2.Blog 3.Blog 4 The black will stand out against the red or blue. Also, I agree while being populated keeping it the way it is with commas or periods added will work or just leave alone if no one is up to putting them in. I guess in future it would make sense that each heading that now exists becomes a page and each of these pages is listed on the MAIN PAGE.--DxCFS (talk) 15:39, 29 November 2015 (PST)

This all sounds great! The page as it stands now isn't at all a problem for me but everyone is different in terms of their capacities and just want to make sure the current layout isn't a barrier to others participating. I do think as we build out new pages, it would be wise, though, to keep categories in mind as it will save time. I wonder if categories are mutually exclusive or if a single article can be tagged with multiple categories? --JenB (talk) 16:50, 30 November 2015 (PST)

I've reformatted the very first section (infectious agents) so the items are in alphabetical order, and comma separated. I see this as a temporary solution - the more I think about it the more I am inclined to agree we should use categories for these things as the category is specified within the specific page, and category lists are created automatically. But at least for now the commas and ordering help readability. Let me know if you think it looks like an improvements, and I can reformat the rest. Where names are like "The Lancet" we can alphabetise based on the first proper word, eg Lancet. Generally I think we should alphabetise based on the page title (eg Jonathan Edwards goes under J) to keep things simple. Perhaps once we have created the vast majority of the stub pages, we can look to reformat. Olliec (talk) 04:28, 5 December 2015 (PST)

Hi Olliec,

I think the comma will work even though I can barely see it it seems to at least put 2 spaces between each item and the alphabetizing will probably help a lot. Right now we see a GIANT main page and I think the main page should eventually be just the main heading without the items under them and then you access that header which is its own page. Then the items for just that header will come up which I think will lend itself to better navigation and just easier on they eyes whether items remain as they are or the category option is used.

Nothing like the blue link eye burn that is much like what you get with Reddit. Plus scrolling is a pain for initial navigation for a lot of patients. But if this is not in the near future then yes, start plugging in commas and alphabetizing and I hope someone else can help you out because right now I just can't. --DxCFS (talk) 08:35, 7 December 2015 (PST)

please can we make the capitalisation consistent for the links/pages ? it's much easier to do this now, than fix it afterwards.--Suelala (talk) 21:56, 7 December 2015 (PST)

I agree we must fix the capitalization. We're already seeing broken links as there is a mismatch. I figure best to copy Wikipedia which seems to say that title capitalise the first letter ONLY, unless it's a proper name. ie we have titles like these: "Cognitive behavioral therapy", "Post-exertional malaise", "Royal Free Hospital", "Nancy Klimas". No link should start with a lower-case letter (I think it's impossible for a page to actually have a lower case start letter). I've added this to the guidelines. Olliec (talk) 01:08, 9 December 2015 (PST)

Reading everything above it looks like adding commas into some of the topic lists in the last section will help. I am happy to go in and clean this up by doing that.

Using Categories
Here are some examples of existing category pages (i think these are the only ones):

http://www.me-pedia.org/index.php?title=Category:Diagnoses http://www.me-pedia.org/index.php?title=Category:Definitions http://www.me-pedia.org/index.php?title=Category:Medical_hypotheses

Categories can also have hierarchies: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories

I actually like having a listing of nearly every article *somewhere* as it helps me to monitor where we are in this early stage. So perhaps we keep what we have but put a section higher up with top level categories so folks can use that for browsing and scroll down only if they want to? --JenB (talk) 04:49, 28 November 2015 (PST)
 * This link shows ALL articles: http://me-pedia.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages&from=&to=&namespace=0&hideredirects=1 Olliec (talk) 00:58, 10 December 2015 (PST)

There are also some great category extensions: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Category_extensions --JenB (talk) 04:59, 28 November 2015 (PST)


 * ==Category extension code for "By country"==

Can you remove numbers? Put bullets or nothing. Also, can we put Categories of Africa, Asia, Australia & New Zealand in a line instead of stacked; one after the other. There must be a code that can line them up! I really, really hate the category extensions and even if you use them you don't have to organize the front page using them. I think it makes things messier. I really don't think I can express enough how the front page cannot have all this crap on it. Better to have a subheading, click on the subheading and you get what you want. --DxCFS (talk) 20:12, 24 April 2016 (PDT)