Wikipedia talk:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal/to do

PNA index page structure
There are several problems with the organization of the PNA root (index) page, some of which are related to overall PNA subpage structure.

One problem is that it is somewhat hard to find the appropriate link for a topic. As evidence of this, there have been several instances of (essentially) duplicate pages being introduced (quite possibly due to not seeing the existing section link):
 * Anthropolgy existed under Social Science, but was also put with Archaeology under Natural Sci.
 * Computer Science under Nat Sci, and Computing under Applied Sci.
 * Psychology under Soc Sci and under Applied Sci.
 * Another editor pointed out these multiple sections: "Military History", "Military history", "Military", and "War"

Another problem is that the links that existed at times had very context-sensitive names, such as "Other", yet the context was not always readily apparent.

Related to this is that the organization of major sections like Applied Sci was not immediately clear. A glance might make you think they were alphabetic, but that was wrong - the "mid level" was alphabetic, but interspersed were lower-level topics (next to their superior topic), yet these lower topics were not distinguished from the mid-level.

Then there's the involved PNA subpage structure. The main topic groups each a page displaying all the detail of the included topics. These seem likely to be too large with the new bot approach. Then there are mid-level topics (sometimes), which have a page grouping several topics - in the old way, these were usually sections on a single page, but with the bot, the lowest levels need to be on their own pages.

These tiers of PNA sections were not clear on the index page, and what's more the links lead to sections of the huge major-topic page, rather than to the specific named page.

I've made a revision to the Applied Sci part of the PNA index page to attempt to address these problems. Here are some example entries:


 * Geography – ( Cities - Countries - Islands - Lists - Mountains - National parks - Regions, provinces, states - Rivers )


 * Health science – ( Anatomy - Medicine - Pathology - Pharmacology - Psychology - Misc. )


 * Transport – ( Aerospace - Automobiles - Rail - Rapid transit - Misc. )

One idea here is that the display is two-dimensional: alphabetic downwards for mid-level topics, and alphabetic on a line for the related subtopics. I think this should help find subjects better and faster.

Another thing is that I've set the links to go to only the named subpage. For the low-level, this is just what is asked for, and since it (and its siblings) can be big, this limits the surrounding noise and the display time. The mid-level links can be set to go to a mid-level page that transcludes the related low-level pages. (If there is no such, as hypothetically for Transport above, there wouldn't be a link, just a keyword.)

I think something along these lines is needed to make PNA more usable.

-R. S. Shaw 21:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC)