Feminist SF Wiki:Organizing information

There are numerous ways to organize and make information available on the FSFwiki, using the MediaWiki software. Here we lay out the various methods we've developed or adapted so far and explain them.

Search

The search feature is a basic mediawiki software feature. It's not perfect. (more on search; link to help searching; info about case-sensitivity, variant spellings, etc.; use of google as substitute)

Automatic indexes

A to Z of all pages; see also categories

Redirect pages

creating redirect pages for some variant spellings that are not ambiguous

Disambiguation pages

creating pages for terms that are ambiguous

Special indexes, directories, and hubs

For topics of particular interest to the FSFwiki we are developing a limited number of special resources that combine navboxes, lists and indexes, and categories to gather together information on a particular topic. See:

• Encyclopedia of female characters (EFC)
• Index to queer women in SF (QW)
• Index to women of color in SF (WOC)
• Guide to oppressions and intersections in SF (GOI)
• Directory of female authors (DFW) (early development; please discuss

See FSFwiki:Special resources project to propose new ones and discuss the ones currently being created.

Lists

Lists are pages on any topic whatsoever (appropriate to FSFwiki) that gather relevant information and link to it. They are incredibly flexible, and can include various ways of sorting, references, notes, aliases, pseudonyms, variant names, etc.

Infoboxes

Special boxes on pages that provide a standardized way of displaying basic information about the topic of that page. Can be combined with navboxes; this can be useful for series of works -- see., e.g., Sins of the Past, which includes a combined info-navbox for that TV episode.

Navboxes (navigation boxes)

Special boxes on a page that provide a standardized way of linking to related information. Can be combined with infoboxes; this can be useful for series of works -- see., e.g., Sins of the Past, which includes a combined info-navbox for that TV episode.

Category system as tree

See Category:Categories to browse category tree.

Category system as keyword (tag)

See Category:Tags to browse tags.

Lists or categories?

This is a set of proposed guidelines. Discuss at FSFwiki talk:Organizing information.

Use a list instead of a category when

• There is a discrete set of members, as in, "List of winners of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. The list permits adding information like year so that a reader can easily verify whether or not the list appears complete.
• The subject of the list is not discrete and easily bounded; as in, "List of modern writers". "Modern" is a term which is subject to discussion and definition. The list permits qualifying comments, subheadings, footnotes, etc.
• The subject of the list may overlap or be redundant with related subjects; as in, "List of X Award winners". Since people tend to win multiple awards, no single award is generally defining for that person, and people could end up with a stack of "award-winner" categories that would obscure other categories.
• Members of the list would have varying degrees of membership that can be better defined on a list than a category. For some people, inclusion would be a point of trivia; for other people, inclusion is a major facet of their identity. For instance, List of people with ties to the SFWA could include people who were briefly members; people who are lifelong members; people with significant work in SFWA; and people who have abjured the SFWA.
• Writers by genre. Writers by genre should probably be done by list not category. Each writer may write within many genres, and the genres can be split into a million subgenres, and one could argue endlessly over whether to include a writer within a genre category or not. What if the writer only wrote one book in that genre but almost everything else in another genre? What if that one book was critical to formation of the genre? Etc. Much better to do with a list which can actually also cite the works & explain the criteria by which the writer is included.

Use a category instead of a list when

• The category fits into a simple subject tree that is used for sorting. For instance, Category:1962 births.
• The category is intended to be a massive comprehensive category that is too large as a list, with thousands of members -- basically, an index. For instance, Category:Writers by name.

What about other situations?

Combination categories

When you really want a combination of two categories — for instance, "Writers born in 1962" or "Writers born in the 1960s"; or "People who both wrote and directed" or "Women cartoonists" — it's better to use a combination search function. Unfortunately we don't have one right now, but we're working on it.

Some special, very big combination categories

Female creators and female characters pose a special problem that other identity categories don't pose -- they're too big to work easily just as a list. "Queer women SF writers" or "Queer SF writers" or "Women of color who write SF" can be easily made into a list. Doing so is desirable, because it lets us highlight a definable set of members that are very interesting for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, some of those very interesting categories (like "women writers") create very large categories, and when spelled out make category lists look very big and hard to read. And since these are such large categories and may even be the majority of their parent categories (women writers are the majority of the women category and the writers category) it might seem easier to separate the minority ("male writers"). But as a feminist project, we have a specific interest in women's writing as the writing of women, so we want "women writers". The solution we are developing now is to identify these (hopefully few) situations; give them a short category TAG of their own, and create a set of information and navigation boxes and indexes that help organize them. We have done this with the Encyclopedia of female characters (Category:EFC) and are developing one for female writers as well.

Identity categories

These are probably best handled as lists not categories. Categories are likely to be overlapping and add up in ways that obscure other categories. (For instance, most people have at least one nationality; at least one language; a slew of abilities and disabilities; one or more sexual identities; one or more ethnic and cultural heritage identities; one or more important political and religious belief identities (capitalist, Libertarian, socialist, anarchist, atheist, Buddhist); other major belief and philosophical disposition identities (pacifist, vegetarian). And some of these can change over time, with changes in identity or changes in known information. A list can lay out and define the criteria, and use subheads to organize people within the list.

Occupation and activity categories

These should be reserved only for SF-related occupations — such as photographers, editors, writers, FSFwikians, Film and TV producers, scholars, storytellers, and so on. Other categories of great interest, such as "feminist activists", "scientists", "educators", "philosophers", and so on, won't be populated to such an extent, and could be handled with lists. See, e.g., List of female STEM professionals involved in SF.

Works by genre

Probably this will work as a category. Remains to be seen.

See also

• Categorization