new categories for collaboration

[ka3jjz]

As was pointed out to me just recently, the collaboration county has become unwieldy, with just under 1000 articles (!!) attached to it. To be frank, I never thought it would get this big! Clearly this can't continue, so some new categories are needed.

As a way of review, categories are groups of articles that cover the same topic. It's advantageous for us to use this, since MediaWiki maintains this indexing internally - no user intervention is required. Just looking over some of the stuff we now have, here's a list of categories that I came up with - can anyone think of any others?

• County Names (would contain lists of counties per state and county based information already posted)

• Province Names (similar to the above but for counties/regions within Canadian Provinces)

• Unit IDs

• Response Codes (would include 10 codes, since not every area uses the same 10 code list or has the same meanings)

• Trunking Information

• PS Locations (public service locations - things like station locations, station IDs and so forth)

• Railroads

I'll start by creating these categories today. Obviously with only one person doing this, it's going to take a while to get everything moved over so any help would be appreciated. The way to fix this is very simple; change

[[Category:Collaboration]]

to whatever is appropriate - say for a list of county names...

[[Category:County Names]]

If you think of another grouping we can use speak up now - there's quite a mess to be cleaned up. Once we get a list of categories together, I will modify the guidelines article.

73 Mike

[edit] We already have ones for Aircraft and FTO (fire tone outs) in case anyone was thinking about these. And it would probably be more generic to say 'County Data' and 'Province Data'

 

[captclint]

Since we have separate collaboration links (active or not) for each state agency, I would vote for State Data for such things as Unit ID, barracks locations, mile marker troop boundaries, maps, etc, or did you expect PS Locations would cover this at both county and state level.

BTW, we may have set our selves up for a lot of orphan pages. EVERYTHING has this collaboration link (active or not), and It really isn't obvious that creating a page in some of these does not automatically link it to something. For example: Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (PA ) was created but it was not obvious to me that it had to have a link in the State page as well, since it was a state agency. It is going to take a bit more effort in examples to help everyone understand this.

I also think some examples of how you would like the structure of the State pages would be in order. It looks like you (Mike) were responsible for most of the Pennsylvania(US), and I think this could serve as one example. I know the wiki is supposed to allow creative freedom, but I think people do best with examples.

 

[ka3jjz]

I was thinking that PS Locations could cover both county and state levels, but let's get some more ideas - I'm open. There's lots of room here for how to categorize this stuff. To me, State Data seems a bit broad, since there are so many counties within each state. Come to think of it, PS Locations is also a bit too broad, but we have a few articles with nothing but location based data in them.

Yes, I see where we have some Department level stuff. Perhaps a different category (say State Agencies?) would work for this.

I know of one additional category for some stuff we already have - Amateur Radio Repeaters. We have a few articles already set up with this information. We will likely also need one for the state-driven sports pages (there are several of these)

Yes, a few examples will help - but let's get some more thinking on this. The more eyes on this, the better 73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

I was asked for some examples of what I was thinking with the list of new categories, so here we go - the more I think about it the more that I realize that these pretty much encompass the majority of the data that has been submitted so far. Note that it's perfectly acceptable (and encouraged) for an article to belong to more than one category:

County Data and Province Data would cover the majority of the data already submitted as a high level index, 1 level lower than 'collaboration' (which would continue to be the default). Counties for US data, Provinces for Canadian data

Unit IDs - data that lists a specific unit, a Unit ID and/or the kind of equipment with which it's associated. Articles that display apparatus photos are also valid here

Maricopa County (AZ) - The RadioReference Wiki
(and as shown, it also has a FTO reference)

Response Codes - lists of 10 codes or other state or county-specific codes used by personnel when responding to an event

The first section of:
Hamilton County (OH) - The RadioReference Wiki

Trunking Information - descriptions of trunking systems; frequencies not yet ready for the database, new systems coming on line

* StarCom21 Statewide P25 - 700/800 MHz (Illinois) - The RadioReference Wiki

ATCO Electric P25 - The RadioReference Wiki

PS Locations (PS = Public Service) lists the physical location of a VFD, police station, unit, ect.

The Fire station section of:
Hamilton County (OH) - The RadioReference Wiki

Railroads - any data about railroads that pass through or are common in a county/province

CNE - The RadioReference Wiki
(This would be also indexed under Trunking Information)

Aircraft Monitoring - airport data, frequencies, ect. Validated data should go to the database, then use the extensions to pull the data back

KAVP - The RadioReference Wiki

FTOs - lists of Fire Tone Out information

Glacier County (MT) - The RadioReference Wiki

Amateur Radio Repeaters - as the name suggests, lists of ham repeaters

Amateur Radio Repeaters in Colorado - The RadioReference Wiki

State Agency - As the name suggests, articles about specific state agencies

Arizona Department of Corrections (AZ) - The RadioReference Wiki

Sports Events and Organizations - As the name suggests, sporting events, organizations - indexed by state

Illinois Sports - The RadioReference Wiki

Additions? 73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

Why didn't I think of this before? Instead of a giant 'County Data' category, it could be split up by region - for example, NJ data is Mid Atlantic, Vermont data is New England, Kansas data is Great Plains, etc. To me it makes much more sense than 1 huge overbearing category.

Alaska and Hawaii can have their own category - their data is somewhat limited, so it makes more sense to keep them together - say in a 'Alaska/Hawaii' category.

Thoughts? 73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

OK here's a revised list - note how the US is split into regions along (more or less) geographic lines. If there's no word, I'll start building the US categories this afternoon - the other ones (except for Trunking Information, which I will need to create) already exist;

• Aircraft Monitoring

• Amateur Radio Repeaters

• Collaboration (default)

• FTOs (for articles that list fire tone out information)

• Province Data for all Canadian content regarding provinces, counties, regions, and so on

• Railroads

• Sports Events and Organizations Grouped by state and organizations, hockey, baseball, football, golf and other sports related content

• Trunking Information - for data on new systems, and trunk data not yet ready for the DB

The United States category will be broken down into the following regions, by state:

• New England (Ma, NH, ME, Vt, RI, Ct)

• Mid Atlantic (NY, PA, NJ, DEL, DC, MD)

• Southern (Al, Ark, Ga, La, Ms, Sc, Fl, Va, NC, TN, Tx, Ky, WV)

• Midwest (Ill, Ind, Ia, Mi, Mn, Mo, Oh, Wis)

• Great Plains (Col, Kn, Mt, Neb, NM, ND, OK, SD, Wy)

• Intermountain (Id, Ut, NV, Az)

• Pacific (Cal, Wa, Or, Ak, HI)

• Possesions (PR, VI)

The collaboration category will remain as a default, and where to put things that don't seem to fit into these categories. The FTO category is intended to make it somewhat easier to find that information, as it's hard to find now unless you search for it in the db.

Comments? 73 Mike

 

[jpryor]

Maybe add a category dedicated to Military & Federal information.

 

[ka3jjz]

We already have categories for them, but good suggestion nonetheless

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Category:US_Federal_Government

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Category:Milcom

73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

OK I've built categories for the Mid Atlantic Region and Midwest Region since they seem to be the most active, with Illinois and Pennsylvania stuff, at the moment.

All you need to do is change the category statement at the bottom of your articles to read;

[[Category:Mid Atlantic Region]] or

[[Category:Midwest Region]]

whichever is appropriate. Nothing else need be changed - Mediawiki will do the rest. I will get the other categories built in a bit.

With 900+ articles in the collaboration category, it's going to take some time to move things out of there and into all these new categories. Don't be afraid to have an article belong to more than 1 category - that's perfectly acceptable.

This is going to take awhile.....73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

All the new categories have now been constructed, and are documented at the bottom of the gateway page below...

Collaboration Gateway - The RadioReference Wiki

From here on out, the collaboration category should ONLY be used if there seems to be no other categories that would fit. Eventually there should be very little in this category.

The guidelines have also been changed to reflect the new categories. Of particular interest - please bind to the FTOs category if your article has Fire Tone Out information. Hopefully this will make it much easier to find this information, then trying to hunt it down (if it exists at all) in the database.

There are a great many articles whose category statement(s) must be changed. Feel free to jump in and help, please - there's more than enough work to go around.

73 and thanx to everyone for their cooperation and support Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

I just wanted to take a moment and thank the folks that have jumped in here to migrate articles to the new categories. At last check, we're just over half way done. Way to go! 73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

Whew! Finished. There's one redirect I will take care of later, but it looks real good. Some of the categories are quite big, and I expect there will be even more put into them. But for now, it's manageable.

Keep in mind - from here on out, use the Collaboration category only when you don't know where to put something. Let's keep that as clean as possible. The list of available categories for this project is at the bottom of the Gateway, and may grow if the need arises.

Thanks again to all who helped out - I wasn't looking forward to doing nearly 1000 articles on dialup!

73 Mike

 

[blantonl]

Mike,

All I can say is... fantastic job. Thanks!!!!