Explore Sandbox

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A place for experimenting with the "Explore" sidebar on the front page.

My original clustering of topics by broad subject is apparently falling apart on the front page. While in my original revamp there were a few things that were more "gag" pages (like cows, hot sauce, meat market), there's stuff that should be sub-topic-of-a-subtopic stuff popping up on the main explore page: barber shops, nimby, ... maybe there should be a page that organizes davis philosophical-political issues, a page for services (like barber shops), and a page for religion (so you can put places of worship, religions, whatever),.. just a thought. Maybe we should have an organization party so we can bring more quality content closer to the top level... some things are not as well placed as they should be. -jr

The following are the recent most frequently requested pages after Recent Changes and Front Page (This is for some particular month and only that month. Hense it is particularly biased information and might be largely useless..): 
People
Events Board
Friends Urging Campus Kindness
Sword and Sandals
Senate Candidates
Budget Hearing Scandal
Student Focus
Housing Guide
Davis Map
Senate
Apartments
ASUCD Open Government
Frog Signs
Good Ideas For Dates
And here is a list of the most common search keywords(external search engines) 
davis
wiki
apartments
ca
daviswiki
davis411
bistro
california
ciocolat
phleger
naum
crepeville
apartment
uc
restaurants
allegre
pizza
thai
pepperwood
restaurant
temescal
Finally, here is a list of the most common(case-insensitive) search queries for the Davis Wiki search bar: 
    178 Senate
    164 FUCK
    113 Wanted
    108 Rob Roy
    102 Test
     86 Wanted Pages
     77 ASUCD
     70 apartments
     59 housing
     58 California Aggie
     54 Ben
     53 LEAD
     53 Crepeville
     52 Restaurants
     50 Alcohol
     48 KDVS
     46 SUshi
     46 STUDENT FOCUS
     46 Katy Tang
     46 GASC
     45 User
     43 Gena Rinaldi
     43 Cafe Roma
     42 TO DO
     42 RANDOM
     42 Bike
     41 Ben Duax
     41 Aggie

That should give a fairly good idea of what people look for on the site.

Step 1

Lets find the most important (structually) pages. Then lets organized them. Let's make sure all pages in the current Explore have links from at least 5 other pages. (Click on the page's title to do a search for the title string)

Ken, James — I put Spiritual Organizations inside of Organizations instead of Explore. If I were looking for a religious place I would look at Organizations? I think we might need a massive rehaul of Explore come the creation of UC Davis, Davis and a few more general pages. My concern is that while a catalog of churches is useful, there's a lot w/o pages right now and the few that do have very little outgoing links. I think the page ought to be in Explore in a bit, but maybe not right now. - PhilipNeustrom

Can we add Hotels to this? — KenBloom

Previous Version

Events Board and Regular Events

Davis Life

City of Davis (Map)

UC Davis

Food and Drink

WiFi Hot Spots, Public Internet Terminals, Linux Users

Attempt #3

questions/concerns: I think LSA, GSA should be on Explore, but as of now they don't link to much. They're both fantastic or soon to be fantastic, but I think they should link to a great deal of pages (if possible), because Explore is supposed to be a starting point. I'd help out but I don't know anything about either organization :) Even links to sort of silly things would be good, because it's likely that a law student or a graduate student would first click on GSA or LSA, seeing it there. - PhilipNeustrom

Events Board and Regular Events

Davis Life

City of Davis (Map)

UC Davis

Food and Drink

WiFi Hot Spots, Public Internet Terminals, Linux Users

Attempt #2

IN PROGRESS (Any ideas?)

I think that this is a good start, but there seems to be the problem of wanting to just throw in a page that's good just because it's good — not because it's really in the right spot. I'd say our reorganization of Explore needs to wait for probably 50 or so more pages in the wiki. Right now, I'm going to spend my time instead making sure all our pages are linked up well and organized in a general->less general->specific->more specific manner. I.E. we have Frat Parties, free beer, but no Parties and Drinking pages. Just my 0.02 - PhilipNeustrom

I totally agree. But, I also think that people who would love the site if they clicked on the right pages might give up on the site when it seems completely geared towards each section of town. I actually didn't necessarily choose the BEST pages to put in there, but just ones that linked to lots of other ones, or were at least exciting. I know they're sometimes "sub-classes", but I figure as far as utility goes, I think it would get people more excited about the site. Sometimes, I think the less exploratory indivual gives up one daviswiki when it just seems like another Davis411, which perhaps the "breakdown by city area" might suggest to the unitiated. The page of the day does a lot to despell that notion, but the explore setup does not at all reflect where the dominant amount of content is. Is there any way to see what the most content-heavy pages are right now, just out of curiosity? - jr

Attempt #1

Purging of Version dated 5/23/05



Events Board, Regular Events

Davis Life

City of Davis (Map)

UC Davis

Food and Drink

9/30/05 Version

Events Board, Regular Events

Davis Orientation

City Life

UC Davis

Computer and Internet

Anyone else interested in fixing Explore? IMO, it is way too bloated. Stuff like Cows, KDVS, and Photography, while interesting, aren't things people really need to see on the front page. — AndrewChen

Is Yuba really "nearby"? I mean, it's quite a bit farther than the others listed.

Feel free to change/reorganize the categories.

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