Archive:Tutorial:Creating a glossary page

UNDER CONSTRUCTION !

Glossary pages present precise and short definitions of terms or concepts. They aim at helping the end user who is unfamiliar with the exact definition of a term. They contain links to more detailed information such as legel texts or methodological documents for those users who need to know the full details of a definition.

Glossary pages can be used from all pages within Statistics Explained, but, due to their stable link, also from all other possible web pages.

To create a new Glossary page or enrich an existing one, follow the step-by-step descriptions below.

Preparing

• The feeling that a term will not be understood by all and needs explaining is the main reason for creating a new Glossary page. The occasion may be your writing a Statistical article, or your reading or revising one, especially when encountering a hyperlink in red to a non-existing page.

Links in red Links in red are non-functional, leading to a page which does not yet exist - or no longer exists. It is an indication of 'work to be done' as well as an invitation to do it, to create the page if it is on a term or concept which you feel needs explaining. On the other hand, never hesitate to put an internal link on any term which in your view should be explained further, even if the resulting link is red and you don't have the time or the competence to create a corresponding Glossary page.(see How to create a statistical article .......create internal link, glossary items)

• Take a look at existing Glossary items, especially in the subcategory (e.g. Agriculture glossary, Population glossary) your page would belong.

• Get an idea about their common structure from the Models of different types of Glossary pages: General concept, Nomenclature, Statistical concept, Statistical indicator and Survey (or Data collection).

Length and focus of Glossary pages Glossary pages should be short: a reader should be able to find the definition he/she is looking for and be able to get back to the article in less than one minute, with a fuller understanding. This does not exclude that a Glossary page explains more than one term. Sometimes it makes sense to group a limited number of connected definitions, because then relationships and differences show up more easily (see Marriages for an example). Their number must however remain limited, 3-5 items is a maximum. A Glossary page should not become a thematic glossary on its own.

• Recycling of published definitions and glossary items is a convenient way of getting subject matter. Possible sources are

• existing glossary chapters of publications such as the Yearbook, a Panorama publication or a SIF;
• published thematic glossaries (e.g. );
• definitions in CODED, Eurostat's Concepts and Definitions Database.

But make sure to adapt the definitions to your audience, the general public, and to shorten and reformuletate them more simply if necessary. This is especially recommended for definitions retrieved from CODED, an instrument for specialists getting its content in many cases from legal texts.

The content of a Glossary page * Definition: . * Example: only for Nomenclature. * Further (Eurostat) information: links to :* the most recent and much more detailed information available on the Eurostat web site, only metadata! :* it is subdivided in sections, not all of which have to be present in all Glossary pages: downloadable publications pre-formatted main tables (including graphs and maps) database queries dedicated section(s) on the web site other information, including legal texts, manuals, ... The number of items in each of these sections should not be excessive; a maximum of 10 is recommended. * Related concept or indicators : discusses the policy and other reasons behind the data collection and the uses for the data: the legal basis, the policy context, why society as a whole or particular groups (business, policy makers, ...) need them. * Statistical data: to ONE and only one Statistics Explained Statistical article, the most relevant one, as to statistical data, for the glossary item.

Definitions of terms and concepts As a rule, definitions should not be in a Statistical article: not in the text itself, not in a separate 'definition box' and not as part of 'Data sources and availability'. A definition should be in a separate Glossary page, in the 'Background area', for several reasons: * Definitions interrupting a text make it longer and more difficult to read (especially for readers already familiar with it). * A separate Glossary page can be linked to from any Statistical article where the term is used, thus avoiding duplication and minor or major differences in definition. * By putting the Glossary page in the category 'Glossary' it is automatically added to the alphabetical list of all Glossary items. See also: #Inserting_an_internal_link

Entering and navigating Statistics Explained

Go to the Main Page (URL: http://en-se.eurostat.cec/index.php/Main_Page). At the bottom right of the 'Welcome' box two overviews can be accessed (they are also in the 'navigation' box on the top left of every page):

• the theme tree or Statistical themes page presents a clickable overview of the Statistical themes and subthemes (the nomenclature of statistical products and product groupings for dissemination purposes);

• the Categories page lists the ad hoc categories into which Statistical articles and other pages have been grouped, showing also the number of articles and/or subcategories in each category. Categories include the statistical themes and subthemes, but in addition new categories can be created ad hoc whenever they might help users in finding similar pages (see below, #Assigning_an_article_to_a_category).

The 'Special pages' item of the 'toolbox' on the bottom left provides additional access to other overviews: All pages, Popular pages, Recent changes, …

View a specific article by clicking on a page name or, if you know the exact title, by typing it in the 'Search' box on the left top and by clicking 'Go' (if the scrolldown covers the 'Go' button, click ESC to remove it and make 'Go' visible again).

Logging in and entering 'edit' mode

In order to edit pages, you have to log in.

• Click on 'Log in' on the top right.
• Complete the boxes (both 'Username' and 'Password' are the regular ones for logging in the system when starting your pc, 7-digit and at least 10-digit, resp.) and click 'Login'.
• click 'Edit' on top, 3rd item.

Starting a new Glossary page

There are several ways to start a new page:

• On the Main Page or on any page: type the name of the page you want to create in the 'Search' box (left top), click 'GO' (you may have to click 'ESC' first to remove the roll-down menu). If a page with this exact name does not yet exist, you obtain 'No page title matches' in red, with the possibility to click on 'create this page'. Before doing so, check out the 'Page text matches' below, however. A similar page might already exist, which you could update instead of creating a new Statistical article. This list of 'Page text matches' also gives an overview of possible links which you might later on insert in those listed pages, leading towards your Statistical article once it exists.

• If you create a new internal link in an existing page (see below, 7.1) towards a page which does not yet exist, the linked word(s) appear in red; clicking on the new link will lead you to 'No page title matches' in red, with the possibility to click on 'create this page'; the title of the page to be created is made up by the word(s) on which you put the internal link (See 7.1).

Glossary page names A 'natural' name, describing the content generally, distinctively and briefly, is to be preferred. Take a look at existing articles to get an idea. The titles of publications or chapters are often quite suitable. E.g. 'Minimum wages' (SIF 105/2008). Article names start with a capital letter, but the rest of the name usually is in small letters. Except 'official' names of institutions or organizations which can be considered a conventional .

Loading a Model

As a first step in creating a new Glossary page, you can load one of the 5 available models for a Glossary page, which already contain the predefined structure and all templates which might be used. The models are:

• General concept: a General concept is ........ .
• Nomenclature: this model is used to briefly explain statistical nomenclatures (e.g. NUTS, ISCED, ...) and to give an example of its contents and links to the full nomenclature.

WARNING: loading of a Model from the boilerplate will overwrite all existing content! If you want to preserve already existing content, select and copy it, load the Model:Statistical article and then paste it in. If you have inadvertently overwritten something, you can always go to 'history' and roll back or undo.

• Open the menu under 'Select boilerplate' in the box above (just below the title 'Edit: ...').
• Select 'General concept' or ..................
• Click 'Load'.
• Click 'Save page' (bottom of the Edit page, left).

Gloassary page names A 'natural' name, describing the content generally, distinctively and briefly, is to be preferred. Take a look at existing articles to get an idea. The titles of publications or chapters are often quite suitable. E.g. 'Minimum wages' (SIF 105/2008). Article names start with a capital letter, but the rest of the name usually is in small letters. Except 'official' names of institutions or organizations which can be considered a conventional .

Inserting content

You can of course write an entirely new 'statistical story' about a given data set, filling out the Model you imported.

But if you want to convert an existing publication or part of a publication into Statistics Explained format, you only need to copy the text to be inserted insert from the original publication (a Word document, pdf file, a web page, ...) and paste it in the appropriate place within the Model. All existing publications can be downloaded from the publications section of the Eurostat web site or from the EU Bookshop.

The text you have inserted normally needs no additional formatting, except maybe in a very basic way (bold, italic, indents, headings etc.). By clicking on the icons above the editing frame, selected text can be immediately converted into bold or italic, an internal or external link can be put on it (don't forget http:// prefix in an external link !) or a level 2 headline can be created.

See the "cheatsheet" on markup code for the most common formatting code.

Check if some slight rephrasing or re-orginazing of the text might not be advisable (replacing 'chapter' or 'publication' or 'Statistics in focus' with 'article', for instance).

the material for this chapter can usually be found in methodological notes discussing where and how data were obtained, possible problems with availability (countries or years missing, for example) or comparability issues (e.g. different definitions or data collection methods in different countries). Definitions should not be in Data sources and availability of a Statistical article, but in a separate Glossary page

see box 'Definitions of terms and concepts' inTutorial:Creating a Statistical article#Organizing_the_material.

Inserting links in text

Inserting links is a way to connect your Statistical article internally (within Statistics Explained) to other articles or to the Glossary, but also to interesting external information, on the Eurostat site or elsewhere.

Inserting an internal link

A link is 'internal' if it connects to another page within Statistics Explained. The most common case is a link in a Statistical article leading to a page in the background area, usually a Glossary item, briefly and simply explaining an indicator, concept, survey or nomenclature. To insert an internal link:

• Go into 'edit'.
• Select the word or words in the text you want to put a link on.
• Click on the 'Internal link' icon Ab, third one in the icon list above the edit frame (as a result the selected words are put inside of [[ ]]; it is possible, of course, to do this manually).
• Click 'Save page', bottom left of the page.

If the selected words correspond to an existing page, the link is immediately operational. If this is not the case, they appear in red in 'page' view and now several possibilities exist:

• You can rewrite the linked words in such a way they do refer to an existing page (e.g. 'EU-27' instead of 'EU 27' or 'Life expectancy' instead of 'Life Expectancy' - except for the first one, words in a link are case-sensitive!).
• You can create a new Glossary page, if you think the concept needs explaining.
• You can redirect from the linked words to an existing page which is synonymous, by creating a 'redirect page'; redirect pages have as only content: #redirect [[Glossary:name of the destination page|]]. The page 'EU', for instance, contains as only content: #redirect [European Union (EU)].
• And finally, the most flexible solution is to link to an existing page while showing in 'page' view a different text, by using [[Glossary:Page name|Text to be shown]]. E.g. the Union instead of European Union.

However, an internal link to a 'special' page (such as Model, Tutorial, Category, ...) containing free text should include ':' at the beginning: [[:Tutorial:Governance rules|Governance rules]] returning Governance rules.

Inserting an external link

A link is 'external' if it refers to a web page outside of Statistics Explained, either on the Eurostat web site or on other 'external' ones.

To insert an external link:

• Go into 'edit'.
• Select the word or words in the text you want to put a link on.
• Click on the 'External link' icon (with globe), fourth one in the icon list above the edit frame (the selected words are put inside of [ ]; it is possible, of course, to do this manually as well).
• add the url you want to connect to, at the beginning and separated by a space from the selected words: [http://xxx selected words]; do not forget to include http:// ! The selected words should be a user-friendly label of the target page of the URL, as specifically as possible.
• Click 'Save page', bottom left of the page.

Example: [http://www.who.int World Health Organization (WHO)] returns World Health Organization (WHO).

Adding links to the latest data (Further Eurostat information)

There is no difference in markup code between linking to another part of the Eurostat web site and to an external web site. Procedures are identical, as a result, for 'Further Eurostat information' and 'External links'; links in 'See also', however, are internal links, within Statistics Explained. Whenever possible, templates are used, so that changes needed are minimal and usually consist of codes or short descriptors.

Publications

The Model (in edit mode) contains the template (including bullet) * {{Template:Publication|code=KS-RA-07-002|title=Title of the publication}}.

• Replace 'KS-RA-07-002' with the publication code of the publication you want to link to; if you don't know the code, you can find a list of recent publications or search for it on the publications section of the Eurostat web site.
• Replace 'Title of the publication' with the exact title of the publication.
• Duplicate the line with copy/paste and change it accordingly for any further publications you want to add.
• Save page.

e.g. * [http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/product?code=KS-SF-08-108 Acquisition of citizenship in the European Union – Statistics in focus 108/2008] returns Acquisition of citizenship in the European Union – Statistics in focus 108/2008.

It is recommended not to have more than 10 links to publications.

Other information

In this section all information other than Publications, Main tables, Database and Dedicated section can be inserted. Examples are Regulations and other legal texts, communications from the Commission, administrative notes, Policy documents, manuals and instructions for respondents, ...

• Regulation (EC) 1737/2005
• Council Directive 86/2003
• Commission Decision 86/2003

For other documents such as Commission Proposals or Reports, see EUR-Lex search by natural number

{{{title}}} ({{{code}}})

Adding links to other web sites (External links)

As an extra service to users (and to enhance the 'linkedness' and thus the google ranking) links can be provided to a limited number (not more than 10) of high-quality links to trustworthy (semi-)official external sites (e.g. WHO, ILO, FAO, ECB, UNECE, OECD or NSIs). The links should be as specific to the subject treated as possible and they should be deep links directly to the interesting information, not to the home page!

The Model you loaded from the Boilerplate already contains the formatted line (including bullet) * [http://xxx Name of organisation/web site/deep link]<nowiki/> * Replace 'http://xxx' with the URL of the deep link into the external web site. * Replace 'Name of organisation/web site/deep link' with a user-friendly label or description of the target page of the URL, accompanied by the name of the organisation between brackets (abbreviated if familiar). e.g. <nowiki>* [http://www.who.int/whosis/database/life_tables/life_tables.cfm Life expectancy: life tables (WHO)] returns Life expectancy: life tables (WHO)

If more external links are to be inserted:

• Copy & paste the line in the template, including bullet (*).
• Change the new line accordingly.

It is recommended not to have more than 10 external links.

Adding links to other articles in Statistics Explained (See also)

Adding a link to another article is similar, of course, to #Inserting_an_internal_link, see above.

The Model you loaded from the Boilerplate already contains the formatted line (including bullet) * [[Glossary:Name of related article|]]

• Go into 'edit'.
• Replace 'Name of related article' with the name of the article you want to add a link to.

Warning: The name has to be exactly right, including capital/small letters and special characters such as / _ etc.)

You can of course type this manually too (or, alternatively, type or copy in the name of the article, select it and click the 'Internal link' icon Ab, third one in the icon list above the edit frame).

• Click 'Save page' (bottom of the Edit page, left).

If you want to link to more articles,

• copy & paste * [[Glossary:Name of related article|]], including bullet (*);
• replace 'Name of related Statistical article' with the name of the other article.

It is recommended not to have more than 10 links to other article; to link only to Statistical articles or Background articles, not to glossary items.

Assigning an article to a category

To allow users to find similar articles easily, each article must be put into one or several categories (see the list of current categories).

A Glossary page has to be put in the Category 'Glossary' for it to appear in the alphabetical list (unless it is an abbreviation, then it has to be in 'Abbreviations' only). Additionnally, it is useful to also include it in specific subsets of the Glossary: General indicator, Nomenclature, Statistical indicator, Statistical concept, Survey. The difference between general indicator, statistical indicator and statistical concept is sometimes subtle, but also not terribly important. The categories 'Nomenclature' and 'Survey' (and its synonym 'Data collection'), on the other hand, are quite distinct and very useful.

Categories for Glossary pages Categories are user-oriented ad hoc groupings of similar articles. They serve as a navigation aid making it possible to find other articles possibly of interest. * General concept: xxx * Nomenclature: xxx * Statistical concept: xxx * Statistical indicator: xxx * Survey or Data collection): xxx Glossary pages are not put in the themes and subthemes, which are reserved for Statistical and Background articles only; because of their large number they would clutter up these categories and make it impossible to find the statistical pages. Categories are always in alphabetical order. The number of categories has no limit in theory, but categories should only be added if they offer a real service to users for finding similar articles.

• Replace at the end of the Model Statistical article '<Category name(s)>' (do not forget to remove the comment markup < > as well!!!) in [[Category:<Category name(s)>]] with the name of the appropriate theme or subtheme (capital letter at the beginning!). For the exact names and hierarchy, see the list of statistical themes and subthemes.
• If you want to put the article in additonal categories, copy and paste [[Category:<Category name(s)>]] after the first one, separated by a blank, and change it accordingly.

A category which does not yet exist, appears in red in 'page' view. To create it:

• click on it
• add a very brief description of one sentence only in the text frame;
• save it.

A category with only one article is not a problem if it is likely to contain more in the future.

Example for Statistical article 'Transport infrastructure': [[Category:Regions]] [[Category:Transport]] .

Assigning an article to a Unit

Glossary pages usually are not assigned to a specific Unit, as they are not linked exclusively to one single topic; unless they are very specific, concern only one Unit and the Unit wants to assume them. In all other cases they are by default the responsibility of Unit D4 Dissemination.

Assigning a Glossary page is done in exactly the same way as assigning a Statistical article, see Assigning an article to a Unit.

Validating a page

You don't need to do anything for this. The wiki system automatically notifies administrators of any new article or change in an existing one. Old and new versions can very easily be compared and the quality of the changes evaluated.

The Statistics Explained Governance rules provide for a quick validation by D4 Dissemination, accepting and making public small changes immediately and sending significant content changes not from the unit owning a page to the unit owning it for validation. All Statistical articles are the responsibility of one unit. Validation should be rapid.