Contexts of wiki pages

This page describes the concept of a "context" of a wiki page. Contexts set an established vocabulary within its pages.

The context of a wiki page can be seen as a generalization of a namespace/path or category in MediaWiki.

• Example: "Category:Meetings"

• Example: "Events/Wikimedia Mapping Event 2013"

There can be many contexts that a page is a part of.

• Example: "Year-end Party" may have the contexts "Work" and "2026"

• Example: this page may have the context "wiki"

Contexts may be a poset.

• Example: the context "2026 May" can be ordered under ("contains") "2026" s.t. "2026 May" ≤ "2026"

Consider Hierarchical WiKis do not Scale [階層整理型WiKiはスケールしない] (use the translation feature as necessary)

• That page concerns the organization of wiki pages and argues that any hierarchical organization is a subset of all possible organizations, and that eventually another one will start to be used, resulting in the "destroyal [破綻]" of said hierarchy.

• Of note is that the hierarchy described there depends on the connections between pages, and this external property can be reified in many ways.

• "Contexts" concern a common vocabulary, and therefore depend on the contents of the page itself, and is therefore hard to change .

  • It is easy to link to other pages or make new pages without fitting a defined hierarchy, but it is hard to change the content of a page wholly without losng the common vocabularly.

  • Rather, the common vocabularly is modelled itself on common human usage, so there is less likelihood for other vocabularies to emerge and therefore result in "destroyal".

The "Train-Life" Problem

• The page for Bolsterness Bogies in the Pixiv Dictionary has the following breadcrumb:

  • 

• which is clearly absurd…or is it?

Use cases

• Page linking suggestions

  • Suggest autocomplete for same-context pages first