[Pmwiki-users] Why heirarchy?

[Fred Chittenden]

> [Original Message]
> From: John Rankin <john.rankin at affinity.co.nz>
> To: Fred Chittenden <drfredc at earthlink.net>; Patrick R. Michaud
<pmichaud at pobox.com>
> Cc: Pmwiki-Users <pmwiki-users at pmichaud.com>
> Date: 10/19/2004 2:46:27 PM
> Subject: Re: [Pmwiki-users] Why heirarchy?
>
> On Wednesday, 20 October 2004 7:27 AM, Patrick R. Michaud
<pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> >On Tue, Oct 19, 2004 at 10:55:59AM -0700, Fred Chittenden wrote:
> >> There's all sorts of applications and uses for hierarchical structure.

> >> For example, I'm fooling around with a soccer club's rec team with
about
> >> 4000 youth players on several 400 hundred teams.  The most logical
> >> structure would seem to be
> >> *Rec Soccer
> >> **Boys (with ages U7-U18)
> >> ***U7
> >> ****Schedule and Results
> >> ****Team A
> >> *****Roster
> >> *****Practice schedule
> >> *****Team News
> >> [...]
> >> 
> >> SoccerClubBoysU7TeamARoster seems like a rather kludgy long name
workaround
> >> to having a regular hierarchical structure, particularly when one might
> >> have .  When someone views Team A, they'd only have to link to Roster
to
> >> get Team A's roster, instead of using a long name, which would clearly
be
> >> subject to all sorts of errors.   
> >
> >This example is excellent, but I need a response to a clarification.
> >Per the example, given that someone is viewing Team A, they'd be
> >at a page like SoccerBoysU7TeamA.HomePage, and links to the other
> >pages would then be [[Roster]], [[Practice schedule]], [[Team News]],
> >etc., exactly as you've described.  In the current one-level system, 
> >long names only seem to come into play when linking to another team's 
> >roster or page, yes?  Does that happen with enough frequency to be
> >a concern?  If so, what would be a typical example of a cross-team/
> >cross-group link, and what would you expect the markup to look
> >like?
> >
> >Or does the example here envision that each of the "Roster", 
> >"PracticeSchedule", etc. will be groups containing subpages and not
> >leaf pages as I've described them here?
> >
> >Pm
> >
> Would this be a case where a wiki farm is useful? 
>

Farms would not be practical because there are 400 teams, each with their
own roster and other associated team pages.  It would require the webmaster
to create 400 farms, which ain't going to happen, at least not in this
webmaster's lifetime.  The idea is to make a site that is easy enough for
endusers to create and manage their own team web page, using various
templates that would be provided (but which aren't currently available).   

That being said, I suppose farms might work if there were a simple one
click process for an enduser to create a farm.  It would also require the
webmaster to have some sort of file/farm manager to delete old farms
without leaving lots of loose ends and to have some trapping process to
redirect 'loose ends' to somewhere useful.  Such a set of features might be
something worth considering, if reasonable safeguards are available. 

However, one shouldn't lose sight that farm applications would remain
basically be a workaround for pmwiki having such a limited hierarchy.  Kind
of a like a kludge to workaround a generic shortcoming...  Seems fixing the
shortcoming would be more appropriate and then the kludge actually can be
developed from the perspective of offering a useful feature, not a kludge.