Wikipedia talk:Historical archive/Wikipedia arranged by topic

message: :I later undeleted it and moved it to this historical archive subpage, since there is extensive revision history in both the project and the talk page. Graham87 13:34, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

message: The page has been truncated.  any idea how to get the rest of it?  Koyaanis Qatsi, Sunday, March 31, 2002
:The last version I have (db file dated June 18, 2001) continues with only one line, which reads: "[Any discussion?  Replace this line with your discussion...]" If there were any more changes after December 20, they won't be in my copy. Does someone have the last tarball? Brion VIBBER, Sunday, March 31, 2002
No, I meant Wikipedia arranged by topic has been truncated.  Sorry.  Koyaanis Qatsi
:Done thanks to the import of UseMod-era edit histories. Note that Wikipedia:Wikipedia arranged by topic has apparently made Andre's hit list, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. --Brion 11:00 Sep 27, 2002 (UTC)
It's a great idea to arrange articles by topic rather than by discipline, since people don't always know what discipline their topic falls under, ... so why don't you do it??  The names of the categories on this page are disciplines, not topics.  I suggest that the categories should be changed from abstract nouns to concrete nouns.  (I can't think of all the categories myself, but these are examples.)
Natural Sciences --> The Natural World
:Astronomy --> Outer Space
:Biology --> Animals, Plants & Other Living Things
:Chemistry --> Chemicals & Elements
:Earth Science --> Planet Earth, Continents and Oceans
...
Applied Arts & Sciences --> Things Made and Done By People
:Agriculture --> Farms & Gardens
:Architecture --> Buildings
:Computing --> Computers
:Education --> Schools & Learning
I know that some of these categories sound childish, but maybe they should be, so that people who are not familiar with the field can understand them at a glance.
Also, be aware that not all disciplines will have a general topic that includes all the same articles, and vice-versa. But that's a good thing. That's the advantage of choosing to browse a hierarchy of topics or a hierarchy of disciplines. Some Wikipedia articles will show up more prominently in one listing than the other.  So, the first step should be to invent a list of top level topics (i.e. objects and concepts that are studied).
GUllman
As your example shows, an arrangement by topic can easily be (and probably should be) isomorphic to an arrangement by discipline.  Britannica's Propaedia offers an interesting arrangement named by topic.  I offer an arrangement named by discipline in Human Knowledge: Foundations and Limits. --  Brian Holtz
: I think, that it could be some basic knowlefge domains: General (instead Abstract Sciences), Humans ("About Humans", contains Culture, Government, Psyhology, Domestic environment, etc), Nature (sciences and not sciences, "Green Peace" for example), and Techlology (Cars, Robots, Computers. etc). --Kenny sh 11:29, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: May I suggest to include here words that may be the headwords of knowledge distributed over a number of disciplines, each with one facet/screen of abstraction and specification on the same. Examples include chunking (dividing), naming, copying, chaining (linking) to make our approach to the desciption of the world more process oriented.
Also, would not it be nice to indicate on each page the route that you have been following while trying to arrive at an article that you consider to be a hit and not a miss of your own search as a user?
Third, would you agree to a generalisation saying that in practice there are just a few major types of texts/narratives, such as trivia, lists, recipes (know how) and free-form, freely spun text threads (which may be or may not be made a hypertext by a toggle switch yet none existing).
The rest is tabloid information serving the needs of cross-word puzzle solvers happy with four points of the compass of the compendium while looking for another wording of another axis to fill up the whole lot to send in the solution to the editorial board for a prize.
Isn't it interesting that in the post moder era texts are speedily purged to give way to data representations and less palatable reading exercises, not to mention the fact that they demand les on your depth of immediate memory and thinking.
You could also break away with the habit of having one subject in focus and could try to work on the defintion of paired concepts such as form and content, essence and substance, gist and context, near and far, to mention just the most obvious (trivia).
Apogr 12:00, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: a modest proposal

message: see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Wikipedia arranged by topic —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alvestrand (talk • contribs) 23:15, 22 January 2006
:It's back now; see above. Graham87 13:37, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  It's gone.