Website Organization

This website covers a complex domain, and it is an ongoing challenge to organize the material in the best way to make it accessible to readers and researchers alike. We welcome suggestions or feedback at mail@celos.ca.

See also Tier-Based File and Retrieval below.

Here is our current scheme:

Classification Scheme

Departments

These are the general departments of the websites. We think of it as a continuum. From our group itself (Home), Research frames the topics that we have found relevant to public space, Neighbourhoods journalize in-depth views of these topics, News and Commentary gives the reporters's view, the Database provides volumes of detailed references, and Publications represent the best summaries that we can offer.

• Home: All about CELOS, and this website.
• Research: Covers the scope of topics that CELOS has found over many years to be relevant to public space, surprisingly broad.
• Neighbourhoods: The best place to find out what's going on is to look at neighbourhood activities in detail, and CELOS is involved with a number of them.
• News and Commentary: Perspectives from (mostly) local media.
• Database: This is our Regulatory Research Database, which contains references to Law, Court cases, Policies, and Stories we've collected. It's our latest initiative to make the wealth of information we've collected widely availabe. It has now been updated to a seperate website called Public Commons
• Publications: Occasionally we assemble the best of what we've learned into publications made available to the public.

Research Envelopes (Broad Classifications)

• Governance: Management approaches and practices
• Finance: Budgets, Spending, and Controls
• Staffing: Information about city staff
• Physical Assets: Information about city assets likes parks and rinkhouses
• Operations: Practices and Standards; front-line management; programs
• Legal and Regulatory: Policies, procedures, sanctions

Functional Categories:

• Notebooks: Recording of events in a stream
• Analysis: Structured analysis of journals and other inputs
• Research: Formal projects with measurable goals
• Publications: Distributable summaries of information and research
• Correspondence: Background material in the form of correspondence
• References: Background material in the form of web links
• Media: Writings from our local press

Specific Categorization

These are classes under the functional categories.

Functional Category Main Pages

Narratives, Summaries, and Footers

Each functional category home page has (or can have) a header that has a narrative about the contents of the functional category, acting as an overview.

The summary between the header and footer of each page (optional) can have a custom summary of the contents of the folder (sub-folders), possibly using tabs.

Each functional category home page has a footer that has links for that category (sub-folders, and possibly sub-sub folders)

Narratives and footers (appropriately delimited with markup = #narrative / #links) are then included in higher master pages to guide the user.

Tier-Based File and Retrieval

The above scheme allows for a tier based mental process for classifying and filing or retrieving documents:

Tier One (Department):

• Does it involve direct CELOS community participation?
  • If yes, then Neighbourhood Department
  • If no, then Research Department

Tier Two (General Category):

• What General Category does it belong in (propensity of subject weight) - if a document has equal weight in more than one category, might consider filing it in both

Tier Three (Functional Category)

• Is the document a note generated by CELOS observers, an analytical article (brief), a major piece of research (long), published by CELOS, an external reference document, a media report, or a piece of correspondence?

Tier Four (Detailed Category)

• varies

For Neighbourhood, similar, but without a separate tier for functional categories

Major external documents listed as support for analysis and research should also be put in the reference section.