I've been thinking about how we're going to organize the (post)mediawiki. Because 1) I seem to have elected myself "Seniormost Library Gnome" and 2) because I have no idea how we're going to do it yet.

And it's a bit tricky. So I'm awake at 5:28 AM. Which means I'll ask you guys to sort it out. So I can go to sleep, knowing that in the morning, this riddle will be solved, and I can file this thread a week or two from now inside "Library Administration and Announcements" [dev.forums.reprap.org]

First idea: a suggested-if-you-feel-like-it RepRap house style, for self-labeled parts.

Say we have
[objects.reprap.org]

Maybe it gets a 2D barcode, using whatever's most popular and works:
[en.wikipedia.org]

But, speaking as a human. I think human-readable is important, speaking as a human.
But it also gets the URL of the part. Because then the part contains its documentation.

So:
www.reprap.org/wiki/Mendel/Widget
but that's too long, so
reprap.org/wiki/Mendel/Widget
...
everyone knows it's RepRap.org, and we don't need "wiki", so
Mendel/Wiget
but that doesn't look stylish enough, so maybe
[[Mendel/Widget]]
To indicate wiki-ness. One of the last two. It's an idea.
Thoughts? Like it? Hate it?

One reason it will be handy is that a lot of folk just google stuff. So they look at something, type in Mendel/Widget, and it will work.

But also because the part is bonded to its documentation a bit more neatly. And people who edit the wiki will get it instantly.
[[Mendel/Widget]] = [[Mendel/Widget]]

Unless we want to file everything using a n-digit 36 character code, but it' utterly impossible to enforce that even though it scales better.
[[5ceae3ce3klnwerynjry3mbq]] .... Bleeeergh. Nope.

So, is this good enough for the suggested-if-you-feel-like-it RepRap house style until we figure out something cleaner and more elegant?

I'll start a new thread for the hard question. This was the easy one.

No objections (or discussion). Moving this to the library forum.

-- moved topic --

Sebastion, I like the idea. A scheme is already in use by car manufacturers. Their parts systems use 9-digit numbers that designate model in the first three, grouping area in the second (engine, suspension, body etc), and part ID with the last three. It could be very applicable to reprap. If someone innovates something and proposes a designation, it could be listed easily and verified in a "parts book", which would identify clashes before they become entrenched. Human readable, logical, adaptable.

Until we have something better, I might go with [[Foo/Bar]]. But I don't want to tie us into something that doesn't scale. So I'm flagging it "House Style pro tem" until an Information Science guru parachutes in and checks it off.

Also, I don't want to tie the parts or projects to a URL like
RepRap.org/etc/etc/etc/Foo/Bar if there are good Information Science reasons not to, or if it breaks a better system.

"House Style pro tem" is an artifact of us using a mediawiki, and may prevent scaling.
[objects.reprap.org]

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(btw, thingiverse uses a 2d bar code tied to url, but thingiverse and reprap v. thingiverse forking, mirroring and remirroring is discussed elsewhere in this forum.)

Here's an example of how Meccano did it back in the day. They had a single team of engineers and a manager, so they could enforce this:
# 138x
# 138y
# 138z
# 139
# 139a
[arts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">www.meccanopedia.com]

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There's a chance the fellow who CADed those up might put them up under the LGPL for RepRap.