ROUNDERHOUSE COMPREHENSIVE WL NAVIGATION PLAN, FOR USER REVIEW
Hi! The Library's been getting bigger and bigger, but we still lack of a defined and clear content discovery system that lets people easily read and discover articles, thereby stifling the website's growth and sense of identity. I've worked up what I think is a good proposal to replace all of the awkward stopgaps we've been using for the past year or so and finally build something that can carry the Library into the future. The following plan has already been approved by staff, but given that users will be the ones primarily affected, we feel it's valuable to also gather your thoughts and opinions before we implement anything. Without further ado:
SECTION I: DISCOVERY
Navigation will broadly be separated into pages of 1000 entries each, much like the SCP series pages, in the general style that Rumetzen has laid out here (10 blocks of 100, with the numbers fully laid out) with some notable changes:
- Addition of new entries will not be manually done. Instead, there will be 10 chronological listpages modules on the page, each with an offset value of depending on its place in the list (an offset value ignores that number of pages in the order before it starts displaying). So the first module would automagically display pages 0.01-0.99, and have an offset of 0. The next would automagically display pages 1.01-1.99, and have an offset of 99. The next would automagically display pages 2.01-2.99, and have an offset of 198 (99 x 2). So on and so forth.
- Note: The ListPages modules needs some sort of selector to know which pages to grab, and I would much rather it not just select “the first 1000 pages” because that will almost definitely cause problems down the line. As such, I propose a tag to apply to all articles in a given wing: probably for the sake of clarity something like wing-one & wing-two, etc.
- There is a consideration that someone mass-deleting their articles would result in everything getting shuffled around (if someone has 15 articles and deletes all of them, article 5.69 is suddenly 5.54). I propose two solutions: simply write a rule saying we’re not gonna allow people to mass-delete all of their articles and remove the mechanical permission (SCP does this). If they want stuff deleted, they can ask us and we can decide. Option two is just not to do anything and rely on the crowd to just sort of Deal With It in the extremely unlikely and no doubt infrequent event it actually happens.
- Note: The 1000 pages we have now will not be automated, and we will simply use the order Rumetzen has laid out, barring the following exceptions:
- Pages 000, 1.00, 2.00, etc to 9.00 would not be automated. These slots would be hardcoded in, and given to the 1 winner and 9 runnerups of the contest when we open that wing. For our existing 1000 entries, I propose just randomly picking what gets those slots so as to avoid the appearance of favoritism, or we can pick the highest rated articles. It really doesn’t matter. These runnerups would have a special tag, runner-up, in addition to their wing tag that would make the ListPages modules ignore their existence.
- When one Wing is close to closing, like how we have 985 entries right now, Staff will host a contest based around a theme before we post the new page. The 000 in that Wing would be the winner of the contest, the X.00s would be the 9 runner ups. The rest who didn’t make it don’t get the runner-up tag and just get thrown in chronological order when the page gets opened.
SECTION II: TAGS
Our current list of tags is, from a broad look, much more focused on how something is written (first vs third person, prose vs epistolary vs verse, etc) than the content it contains. I am of the opinion that when a reader is searching for something, they’re much more likely to be searching by content (I want to read a story with robots, I’m looking for a specific story I remember had robots in it) than by style (I want to read a story in first-person, I’m looking for a specific story I remember was written in present-tense). As such, I think we should reformat the tags to be content-focused. However, I don’t want tags to become too granular because Wikidot is really shitty at tag management from the admin end (there’s no way to wipe a tag site-wide so you have to go onto every page its on and remove it, misspelling a tag while entering it creates a whole nother tag). So:
- I suggest broad element tags - not quite genres, but elements that reoccur in stories. These can be concrete elements like magic & technology, or more abstract ones like love & war.
- We can crowdsource specific suggestions from our authors and readers, and also encourage them to tagging their own articles and some others. Maybe offering some sort of prize or incentive to do so.
- We can rework our current style tags. A lot of them are very unclear (prose & narrative are some of the worst offenders) and result in even staff having no idea what tags. Building an archive of what pages have a tag and then going through to rename the tag (PITA, but no way around it) is the best inroad to fixing this.
- This section isn’t particularly complex in idea but in execution, it will get hard fast simply because of the tremendous amount of work involved.
SECTION III: RECOMMENDATIONS
This is a large project, no matter which way you cut it. We’re also pressed for time, because we have a mere handful of pages before we hit 1000. As such, my recommendation as Administrator is to enact a temporary measure to give us a week or so to finalize everything and prepare it for post.1 In that period we could also bring on the new staff and deputize them to help us with this. The Tags are also important, but Section I is what we MUST get done before we hit 1000 pages. We’ll need the wing and runner-up tags, but the wholesale element tags can wait (although ideally not long).
I believe this is the best combination of all of our visions for the Library that is at the intersection of practical, ideal, achievable, and future-proof.
That's the plan. I look forward to seeing your thoughts and will probably be fast-tracking this unless there's significant opposition, just so we don't get caught lacking. Thank you for reading!