Help:Manual
From TransGeorgia
This page was created for TransGeorgia editors to understand the process preferred for adding content to TransGeorgia. It assumes you're already familiar with the basics of editing as described on the editing help page.
Consider this page guidelines for the way content should be added and edited on TransGeorgia.
- Importantly, remember: Nothing bad happens if you don't do something as described below. These are descriptive guidelines, nothing more. If you're unsure about how to do something, you can check here. Otherwise, just do it!
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[edit] Pages
Almost all content is contained in normal pages (synonymous with "articles," in case you see that term used). When adding content about a subject, you can just do a quick search to see if it already exists somewhere, and if not, just make a plain old page for it. A list of therapists has a page, as each individual therapist has its own page, and so on. At first, each page is just a page on its own with equal standing with any other page and without any organizational context. Placing the page into a relationship with the others and making it findable comes next.
[edit] Organizing pages
When looking for a resource here, we try to make it easiest to find the most important information first, followed by less important information. (Such as, first, "How do I find therapists near me?" Then, "Does this particular therapist take insurance?")
[edit] List pages
Some pages list things. I'm calling them "list pages" here, but I don't mean anything other than a normal page that happens to list information, as opposed to pages about specific subjects, such as a person or a business. Therapists lists all the therapists, for example.
Early on in the first meeting, the subject was addressed of how to find things when laid out this way. We agreed that the most important way to organize the information was by regions of Georgia.
For this reason, all list pages' top level headings are by region.
When going to a page, the top-level headings used (the ones between == and ==) are always to be locations. For an example, check out the Therapists page. Whenever a location section is added to a page, that location should always be added as a category at the bottom. The Therapists page, for example, is categorized by all its locations. (For more information, skip down to Categories.)
For each subject on the list page, we can include some brief but salient information, such as addresses and whether or not, for example, the therapist takes insurance or will write letters. This helps visitors scan quickly for certain people, to see if they're interested in reading on, or for quick later reference.
[edit] Specific subject pages
Each subject listed in a page should link to its own page, even if none exists yet. On each subject's specific page is where in depth information will be listed, such as qualifications, testimonials from other trans people, and so on.
Each subject's page should be categorized in as many a number of ways as makes sense. This ensures we can find it through categories, even if it somehow slips through and doesn't get included on or linked to from another page.
[edit] Categories
A category is basically synonymous with a "tag" or a "label" in other software. To add a page to a category (for example, to the "Athens" category), just put the right category wiki markup anywhere in the page (for example, just add [[Category:Athens]] somewhere, like at the top or bottom).
Each category has its own page. It is a normal page, which can contain content, and at the bottom, it happens to list all the pages which are in that category. A category's page may contain very general content about the pages contained in its category; if you're in doubt about whether a page belongs in a category, read its category page. Categories shouldn't bother listing specific information beyond that.
Categories will exist for each region of the state. Other than that, there's no set of well defined categories that should exist, beyond what seems logical and/or already does. Preferably, each category's name is very brief, a single word, to make it easy to type in and unlikely to cause misspellings or mistakes.
The existence of a category page doesn't supplant the need for a list page to give a rundown or list of things in that category. For example, just because exists doesn't mean a normal page with a list of Therapists shouldn't also exist.
[edit] Finding information
By the time information is added and pages start to get filled in, they should link to one another. From the main page, several links will guide visitors to find resources by region or by type, and each of those pages will list resources and provide links to specific information about that resource.
Everything is searchable from anywhere on the site from the box at the top.
[edit] Reasoning
Typically a website's content is mapped out in ways that represent the ways we organize ideas in our mind. Such websites neatly box things in to sections, pages, sub-pages, and so on. The information is usually very hierarchal, making the relationship between things inherent in the structure of the site, and vice versa.
There's two reasons why this is a great system for most websites, but not ours.
- In a highly organized website, all the content is known ahead of time.
- In a highly organized website, only one person, or a small team of professionals, creates/organizes the content.
TransGeorgia is more flat and open. It must be so because information is going to be added continuously, and it's not possible to know how that information will expand. Our software, Mediawiki, is built around the needs of Wikipedia, which works in a similar way: an all-inclusive information free-for-all. TransGeorgia will "grow up" in a similar way, by putting information in and then later letting the software help us relate it and cross-reference it to each other, to help others find it. It's far less important, in gathering info, that it exist, setting aside the question of where and how it should exist 'til later.
It won't be as chaotic as it sounds (or as Wikipedia is). The scope of our information is anything but all-inclusive and is relatively small. The purpose of this manual is to make sure whatever information we do have gets (eventually) edited to be predictable to find and consistent in quality.