Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Open-Call:Content Architecture

💡 In simple words: WikiDeal is like a giant library. This is an early invitation to help decide how to organise it: how the web addresses work, how each page is laid out, how markets and contracts are arranged, and whether there is one big WikiDeal or several. The way it is organised today is only temporary — better ideas are welcome.

⚠️ Not yet approved. This page describes a proposal that is still under community review. It is documented here so it can be discussed, improved and endorsed.

Open Call: Architecture, Taxonomy & Content Structure

Open Call (preview, early) — uses the Open Call method · part of the family of Open Calls for creative ideas and programmes

Why this call

WikiDeal currently has a working URL architecture and a working content architecture — but they are temporary. They were put in place to migrate content and get the wiki running; they are not the final design. This Open Call invites new proposals for the global structure of WikiDeal.

Because these foundations affect everything else, this is one of the things that should be refined first. It is therefore a small but important early call: the bases below are already proposed, and the call is about affining and replacing them with a better, durable architecture.

This is, for now, a theoretical / prospective call — exploration within the Prototype 1 R&D programme. No deadline is set yet, and there is no guarantee a given proposal will be adopted. The Discussion tab is already open for suggestions on orientation, framing, limits, and related calls.

What this call covers

1. URL structure

The naming and path scheme for all pages: namespaces (Gov, Markets, etc.), language segments (e.g. /en/), portal and sub-page patterns, contract URLs. Existing working proposals to build on:

2. Article (content) structure

What should appear inside the articles, in a consistent way:

the statistical / data elements that must appear on a page;
standard templates and layout for each content type;
for each contract, everything around it: amendments, addenda (avenants), the contract URLs, the reference rules (legal references), validation status, and how these relate to each other.

3. Markets structure

How market segments and their portals are organised, and the standard set of content types per market (base contract, models, amendments, addenda, validated contracts, legal references, compensation, etc.).

4. Global architecture questions

The deeper design questions to settle:

Is there one WikiDeal instance, or several?
Is there one instance per language, or a single multilingual instance?
How are User Groups managed within the chosen architecture?
How do taxonomy, categories and navigation tie all of the above together?

What matters most: principle, quality & success criteria

As with the other Open Calls, the calendar matters less than the principle and the criteria:

Principle: a single, coherent, durable architecture that serves users and contributors, is language-fair, and scales as markets and User Groups grow.
Quality criteria: consistency across URLs / articles / markets / contracts; clarity and predictability of naming; ease of navigation and search; maintainability; compatibility with MediaWiki and with decentralized data; clean handling of multilingual content.
Success criteria: a proposal that can replace the current temporary structure without content loss; that is reusable as markets and User Groups multiply; and that the community can understand and maintain.

Timing & cycles (still under reflection)

There is no deadline at this stage. Whether evaluation later follows a seasonal cycle (in the spirit of the general Open Call method) is just one option under reflection, not the key to success. For now this is an idea to be explored within Prototype 1.