Organizing Geography and User Groups
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sasCommunity Forum : sasCommunity - general site feedback : Organizing Geography and User GroupsBy Jharper on Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:24 am
I'm confused by the left nav options of Category:User Groups and Category:Geography. I'm not real clear on the distinction between the two. I see Geographies should lump meetings, groups, events, training, Users, etc.
I'm wondering if "Browse all by Geography" is a better, perhaps impractical, description? I know "all" is vague, but I know what a User Group is, but not a Geography.
Then within the User Groups, should a group be listed at all levels or only at the most discrete level? Not picking on Windy City, but for example would they be under North America, USA, and Illinois or only Illinois? If you look at the WCSUG, you'll see they have a whopping 13 categories. Do we want to come to an agreement on a standard?
I suggest they be listed as STATE | EVENTS | LOCAL USER GROUP MEETING
Sample from WCSUG:
Categories: USA | Local User Groups | North America | Events | Illinois | Chicago | User Group Meeting | Local User Group Meeting | SAS Global Forum 2007 | SAS Global Forum 2008 | SAS Global Forum 2009 | Midwest SAS Users Group | MWSUG
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By Donh(sysop) on Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:08 am
You are correct that Geographies is intended to be used with a number of other things as you suggest. The main menu sidebar is only editable by a SYSOP so if we can come up with a more meaningful (and short) desciption that is an easy change.
WRT you comment about categories, some users have gone category happy and include too many categories on their pages. Categories should be well-defined and broadly and broadly applicable so users can click on a category link at the bottom of the page and find other useful pages. I would agree with you that the WCSUG page should not include a number of the categories it currently does, for example:
- USA and North America is too broad, it defeats the point of having subcategories for location/geography if everything is listed at such a high level. And going to the city level is perhaps too granular.
- Likewise, Events is also too broad.
- And including categories for the various events like SAS Global Forum 2007, SAS Global Forum 2008, SAS Global Forum 2009, Midwest SAS Users Group, MWSUG causes those categories to not be as usfule as they could be. For example, SAS Global Forum 2007 should only be used for pages that are directly related to the event (e.g., a page for a presentation that was at SAS Global Forum 2007.
I am unable to assume responsibility for such gardening activities. I am also reluctant to impose my opinions on everyone else. However, if other members of the sasCommunity want to engage in such gardening activities, we can all learn how to best use categories.
Don and Statprof, both being Sysops have noticed some of your gardening activities and have liked what you have done. So please feel free to make other changes. They can alway be undone/rolled-back.
Gardening the sasCommunity should be a collective/shared responsibility.
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By Jharper on Fri Apr 27, 2007 8:16 am
I'm willing to try out the role of gardening the user group area if that is cool with the SYSOPs and welcome anyone else's help or input. I'm just enjoying my first foray into the world of wikis.
I'm thinking of just starting with doing things like cleaning up the categories for consistency, not editing user content. In trying to hypothesize why Windy City had so many cats, I'm thinking they were probably trying to do "related links" rather than "categories where this article belongs". A good idea, but by browsing a category you should, by definition, see related things... I think it is just something we need to sort out as it grows
HTH, Jen
PS - your SAS/IntrNet book made a good airport/airplane read on the way home from SGF.
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By PennSAS on Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:43 pm
Hi,
One example of a non-local users groups could be a group for Women.
- SH
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By Donh(sysop) on Sun Apr 29, 2007 10:07 pm
WRT the issue of organizing geography and user groups, please check out http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Gardener_for_sasCommunity.org for some initial thoughts on such gardening tasks. Please watch the page and feel free to expand it or add comments/questions on the discussion page: http://www.sascommunity.org/wiki/Talk:Gardener_for_sasCommunity.org.
WRT the issue of a category for woman, interesting idea? But an curious how such a category would be used. Perhaps because I am not a woman, J, I don't understand what pages about SAS might only be (or primarily intended for) woman.
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By Rdporto on Thu May 03, 2007 2:24 pm
Since I don't want to be a gardener (at least now), I'd like to suggest that a good idea is to use the alphabetical order in some more meaninful way. For example, Groupe d'utilisateurs de SAS de la ville de Québec should be under letter Q, not G (see [[1]]).
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By Donh(sysop) on Fri May 04, 2007 10:36 am
When a user puts a category tag on their page, they have the option of providing a different value to use for the grouping (it will still use the page name in the list).
It also sounds like this page needs a category tag for Quebec (which would be a sub-category of Canada).
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