Wiki todo @ 12am 9/5

[Deanna Zandt]

From now on, I'll be posting general updates here for discussion purposes, but please look at and take tasks here:

http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Wiki_Task_List

Here we go:

-- There are a bunch of pages for new states that need information! Helplines, shelters, etc. See to do list

-- How to handle volunteering is an item open for discussion still: we started discussing over the weekend, but didn't finish. The short version of the question: do we let people offer services on the wiki, or do we direct them to organizations? For upkeep reasons mostly, I'm leaning towards the latter. Thoughts?

-- I need to work on the front page some more, but have a look at the changes I made and let me know what you think

-- John and I will continue the work on categorizing pages and fitting everything into this faceted-category structure. If you're and organizational OCD nerd and you want to join us, have a look at the plan here: http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Category_Team

Tomorrow afternoon is going to be a bit hectic for me, and I'll be offline for a good portion of the evening. (Great timing, I know.) I'll be available via email and twitter to answer questions after 2pm ET.

[John Walling]

Friday Sep 5 -- 3am PST

I am adding category templates to assist with geography navigation.
See http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Category_Team#Templates
Two are ready and a FEMA region template is pending.

Other category templates can be developed if needed.

John Walling

[Andy Carvin]

Are there any major wiki tasks to be done re: Florida? Please let me know asap because the latest Ike track has it heading to Miami, and we can probably mobilize volunteers there to help out for at least a little while before the storm approaches.

[Alex de Carvalho]

I'm communicating these efforts to our tech community and hope some will get on board to farm the Florida wiki pages.

Florida is such a large state and the entire coast is likely to be affected. We should further divide the state into South and North Florida (and the Keys, which face separate and complex issues regarding evacuation and rescue).

Andy Carvin said:

Are there any major wiki tasks to be done re: Florida? Please let me know asap because the latest Ike track has it heading to Miami, and we can probably mobilize volunteers there to help out for at least a little while before the storm approaches.

[Jon Camfield]

The Corporation for National and Community Service is mobilizing its database of volunteer opportunities (and contributors to it, like servenet.org, idealist, network for good and others) to provide hurricane-related volunteer opportunities -
http://cns.gov/about/newsroom/releases_detail.asp?tbl_pr_id=1127

"Currently, the USA Freedom Corps Volunteer Network has 22,767 hurricane relief / recovery opportunities in the affected states including: Alabama – 5,175; Louisiana – 2,051; Mississippi – 2,459; Texas – 4,536 and Florida – 8,546. The services and opportunities included in these numbers include shelter support, food services, recovery and rebuilding and pet shelter support. "

[John Walling]

Category thoughts

I can create a navigation template for Florida if someone wants to work with me on a geographical breakdown. Example {{USFloridaCounties}} . Each county would have a category, for example [[Category:Dade county]]. By inserting {{USFloridaCounties}} at the bottom of a page, a visitor could navigate to any county category page and view all the links for that county. This needs to be decided early so we can figure out how to divide and tag pages. As navigation templates are added they can be found at http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Category_Team#Templates

I am now going to take a look at the request for MAPS http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Talk:Category_Team#Maps
If you have interest, add your thoughts.

- John Walling

[Brad Banner]

Florida county map and list of county names with county seat - http://geology.com/county-map/florida.shtml John, is it possible to http://gustavwiki.com/wiki/News_Resources like Shleters and Government resources were done?

[John Walling]

Naming categories for tropical cyclones

After struggling with naming tropical cyclones as a depression, or a tropical storm or a hurricane and what to do if it changes status, I decided to just use the proper names for the category. For example [[Category:Hurricane Hanna]] is now [[Category:Hanna]]. Please use just the short names for these categories. Where needed, I clarify the name like this: 2008 tropical cyclone Hanna and not worry about wind speeds. I also link to the Wikipedia page in the category page to help inform the user, for an example see http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Category:Gustav

- John Walling

[Andy Carvin]

also, could we be consistent with the URL? The official url is http://www.hurricanewiki.org. I'm very concerned all of these domain aliases will cause public confusion.

thanks,
ac

John Walling said:

Naming categories for tropical cyclones

After struggling with naming tropical cyclones as a depression, or a tropical storm or a hurricane and what to do if it changes status, I decided to just use the proper names for the category. For example [[Category:Hurricane Hanna]] is now [[Category:Hanna]]. Please use just the short names for these categories. Where needed, I clarify the name like this: 2008 tropical cyclone Hanna and not worry about wind speeds. I also link to the Wikipedia page in the category page to help inform the user, for an example see http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Category:Gustav

- John Walling

[John Walling]

Florida counties and splitting News Resources

Regarding Florida counties, thanks for the link. It looks like we need to start with intra-state regions and then add counties to those regions. Does Florida have an emergency response map that divides the state into regions?

Regarding News Resources, I want to make sure there are adequate categories to facilitate splitting pages, but I prefer to have someone else do the splitting while I work on creating new navigation templates. if its needed, I suggest the task of splitting News Resources be added to http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Wiki_Task_List (BTW, the need to split is a judgement call. If a page is long or anticipated to grow long, then splitting is warranted. Wiki teams can track long pages here http://hurricane08.info/wiki/Special:LongPages and Deanna Zandt has lead on restructuring. )


Brad Banner said:

Florida county map and list of county names with county seat - http://geology.com/county-map/florida.shtml John, is it possible to http://gustavwiki.com/wiki/News_Resources like Shleters and Government resources were done?

[Brad Banner]

There are regions at http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Re...
Each Region there has counties and cities @linked. There is also http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Florida/Me...
Those may or may not be emergency response regions. I found a possible source for emerg. resp. regions at
http://www.ffca.org/associations/5203/files/SERP%20REGIONS%20MAP.pdf . I don't know how up to date it is.

Regarding News Resources, what I really wanted was to make sure that News Resources for a state showed up at something like http://www.hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Category:Florida . Looks like someone else had roughly the same thought and fixed so it does :)

[John Walling]

Brad,

I found the official Florida DEM map here: http://www.floridadisaster.org/DEMorganization.asp which puts counties into 7 numbered regions. I have to think of names for the seven regions. I found the map by following a link from here: http://www.pbs.org/now/society/emergencymap.html

If you add [[Category:Florida]] at the bottom of the Florida News Resources pages, they will be linked via the Florida category page. You should also add [[Category:News]] so all news pages will be linked from the News category page. If you need more filtering, let me know, we can devise another category for that.

John

Brad Banner said:

Regarding News Resources, what I really wanted was to make sure that News Resources for a state showed up at something like http://www.hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Category:Florida . Looks like someone else had roughly the same thought and fixed so it does :)

[Andy Carvin]

Hi guys,

please pay attention to the latest forecasts, because Ike is now just going to skim the florida keys and probably make a beeline to the gulf coast. We should be prepared for florida, but it's quite likely our gulf-coast content will have to be front and center by the beginning of next week.