Can creation of pages at certain level/s be prevented?
Asked by geoff.gaylard:

Hi,

I'd like to know if it's possible to prevent users from creating pages at particular levels in a hierarchy of pages.

Eg, say I have the following pages at the top level of the hierarchy, under the Home page in a space:

* Category 1
* Category 2
* Category 3

Can users be stopped from creating more pages at the above level, but be allowed to add/edit pages *under* each of the above top-level pages?

It seems to me that this ability is fairly necessary, otherwise you can't control the way in which pages are classified. Eg, I want all 'procedure manuals' to go under a Procedure Manuals page, and I want to prevent someone creating a new parent page called 'Manuals' and putting procedure manuals under that...

Thank you.


Answers:
author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

No, there's no way to stop people creating pages in a space if you have given them create page permissions. That's one of the points of a wiki - you have the flexibility to collaborate properly!

comments: author: geoff.gaylard
body: One of the points of a wiki is being able to classify content in a logical and consistent manner.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Yes. And you can't do it if you block people from creating pages in the right place.

Preventing people creating pages in (potentially) the "wrong" place is a technical answer that does not help you with logical or consistent structure. It's an anti-pattern, likely to make more of a mess than a free-for-all because more people are going to end up creating content in totally the wrong place instead of somewhere slightly wrong. It also discourages content creation and collaboration.

The right answer to this problem is "use a wiki properly". Encourage your people to understand where things should be in your structure and guide and educate them if they get it wrong. Don't denigrate their contributions or tell them they're wrong so they can't do it.


author: geoff.gaylard
body: So, what you're telling me is I can't define categories for documentation. That makes sense. And that people can just put stuff wherever they like. All good.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Quite the opposite.

You can categorise pages with labels, page properties or space categories/labels. Your question is about getting stuff into the "right" place in the tree, which is something you should allow. That's not categorisation.


author: geoff.gaylard
body: * Labels cannot be made mandatory.
* What is the tree structure for if it is not for categorisation?


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: So? You don't need to categorise everything. "Hasn't been categorised / doesn't really fit / not actually sure" is a valid category, and so is "we've put it in several categories"

A tree structure is for focus and navigation, it's got nothing to do with categorisation. It's for drilling down to the detail that someone needs, not grouping things together because they're in the same "category".

The structure is absolutely the wrong way to try to categorise pages. A category can cross pages across an entire documentation system and the structure of that system is utterly irrelevant to the categories.


author: geoff.gaylard
body: Of course, your opinions are absolutely correct, in every way.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: It's not opinions, I am trying to explain why it works this way.

I'm sorry it doesn't meet what you think you need, but I can't do anything about it beyond explaining. Structure is not categorisation, you either need to find a tool that tries to conflate the two, or accept that they're not the same thing.


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