Becky Houtman

Since I’ve joined the editing of the New Orleans Wiki, I’ve waffled about just how to use categories. I have an initial tendency to use categories almost like tags — listing significant topics contained in the article. Maybe not quite as extensively as I’d use tags, but perhaps still a bit over-enthusiastically, in light of what I’ve recently read in the Wikipedia guidelines.

To my understanding, it comes down to an issue of browsing vs. searching. Since categories work best for browsing for information, they should be used more narrowly and strictly than tags would be. Wikipedia recommends against creating a category with only one article in it, but since the New Orleans Wiki still has so many potential directions to grow, I’m of two minds on this. I have to agree that clicking on a category link and finding only one thing is pretty disappointing and makes a wiki (or any website) look bare, so I guess whenever possible it’s best to look for the most fitting broad category when new territory is forged until there are enough related articles to merit their own. But now and then I think it’s worth bending the rules (and maybe creating a new category is incentive to think about more articles).

I’m still interested in the uses of tagging — such as the folksonomies they create. It might be interesting to see how relationships between articles and topics develop that way, but I haven’t been able to find anything about tagging in wikis. Then again, maybe it’s not really necessary, since articles that cite each other “tag” each other in a sense.

I posted my Unified New Orleans Plan on the New Orleans Wiki tonight, edited a bit, and with a little more on what’s been happening since. The meeting descriptions could stand some fleshing out, especially since I played hooky on Tuesday to attend a couple Night Out Against Crime events in my area: the Bouligny Riverside-Faubourg Marengo-Faubourg Delachaise Triumvirate, and my own hood, Touro Bouligny. I’m pleased to say that there were no long lines to get in, I didn’t have to put a red dot on anything, and the noise level was quite pleasant.

Anyway, if anyone has an corrections to make or anything to add to the wiki article as the process stumbles along, more editors would be much appreciated (wiki markup instructions if you’ve never done it before). Or leave me a comment and I’ll add it in.