qwaletee wrote:kent, can you weigh in on the page naming vs redirects?

qwaletee wrote:Mentoring, formal; Mentoring, informal -- or even a mix -- Mentoring, formal (USA); Mentoring, formal (RC).

PesachZ wrote:Thanks for link and heads up. I researched it, and created {{Mentoring navbox}} which I've now used to replace the wiki outline on all mentoring pages.

qwaletee wrote:kent, can you weigh in on the page naming vs redirects? We currently have the two subpages primary named as Mentoring/subpage (Mentoring/Formal and Mentoring/Informal). There are plain-language redirects to these for "Formal mentoring" and "Informal mentoring"

However, this comes out looking very awkward and wonkish in the page titling. I would prefer to see the primary name be the simple, "English language" name.

There are other places where there is a clear benefit to using subpage naming. The very structured state pages need it for technical reasons. The country-specific pages need to make their scope as clear as possible, so they would have to be either Pagename (USA) or USA/Pagename. But here I only see awkwardness. the wiki software isn't really using them as subpages in any way, and there's no organizational benefit that I see.

If we need it this way for some technical or policy reason, I haven't figured that out.

qwaletee wrote:I understand the rationale presented, but it is incomplete. I've done quite a bit of Wiki editing on multiple platforms, and while this seems to make sense, it actually doesn't.

In Wikis, the outline of a related set of pages has nothing to do with the naming of the pages. Subpage-style naming looks awkward, reads awkward, and the outline of related pages is not dependent on it -- you can have the same outline structure but name the pages any way you want.

For these reasons, Wikipedia actually no longer allows the use of subpages using this format it was once common there). You can accomplish the structure/outline but use "readable" names. Alternatives include using plain readable titles, adding the higher level identifier as a parenthetical to the end, and using index-style qualifiers -- Mentoring, formal; Mentoring, informal -- or even a mix -- Mentoring, formal (USA); Mentoring, formal (RC).

What's missing from the rationale:
* whether any consideration was given for the problems it creates (appearance and language)
* whether other approaches have been tried
* how use of other approaches has been found lacking
* how the pseudo-physical structure provides a concrete, measurable benefit

For example, this rationale, if written about the state pages would say:

The state pages use a series of templates that are based on an understanding of the page name structure. The naming of the subpages is hidden fro the end-user experience and mostly form the editing experience, so there is no clear benefit from using another naming structure. Any other naming structure would be somewhat more awkward to implement, and would certainly require massive rewriting of code. Perhaps other methods were not tried, but there was no other obvious solution to the problem anyway, as templating has some support for basepage name, which makes coding significantly easier.

That provides a clear rationale for the state naming structure, and addresses the possibility of alternatives and actual costs and benefits. The rationale provided here has none of that.

• Mentoring
• Formal mentoring
  • Formal mentoring (USA)
  • Formal mentoring (Costa Rica)
  • etc. for all supporting countries
• Informal mentoring
• Formal mentoring resources
• Formal mentoring guidelines
• Formal mentoring training

=== Mentoring program wiki outline ===

The following pages constitute the Waze Mentoring Program, and are meant to complement each other.

[[Mentoring]]
*[[Formal mentoring|Formal Mentoring]]
**[[Formal mentoring guidelines|Formal Mentoring Guidelines]]
** [[Formal mentoring training|Formal Mentoring Training]]
** [[Formal mentoring (USA)|Formal Mentoring (USA)]]
** [[Formal mentoring (USA)|Formal Mentoring (Costa Rica)]]
**Etc for all supporting countries
*[[Informal mentoring|Informal Mentoring]]
*[[Mentoring resources|Mentoring Resources]]
[[Category: Mentoring]]