Question: What goes into choosing a topic name?

above: sketch of figuring out how to organize "air" into a research area, and which methods are part of the research area, and which activities would go on what grid...Photo by @nshapiro

We've been having some fun discussions over the past couple months with people on each of the topical lists about what to name the new "top-level" pages where we're organizing. That means -- when posting activities, do they end up on /wiki/balloon-mapping or /wiki/aerial-photography? Do we use the older /wiki/spectrometer page, or the new one at /wiki/spectrometry? But we're hoping for even MOAR discussion!

Let's think about:

1. where and how these new pages will show up -- most likely on a dropdown menu and maybe eventually on the front page of publiclab.org,
2. and, the timing -- we're prioritizing the creation of these "origin" pages amidst all the creation of activities and activity grids we've been working on and will continue to work on through Barnraising.

So far we've created drafts of:

• http://publiclab.org/wiki/spectrometry
• https://publiclab.org/wiki/coqui (created over LEAFFEST weekend; this will, in turn, be linked into a top-level water page once we figure out what to name it)
• https://publiclab.org/wiki/aerial-photography (first draft created September 23)
• https://publiclab.org/wiki/open-air (created Sept 27 by Nick, Leslie, Liz, and only lists the plant-based air filter kit so far)

Up next:

• https://publiclab.org/wiki/multispectral-imaging with @cfastie for all our infrared photography work (actually, it's drafted but needs to be automated.) (Also, that's a really long, and to some, an unrecognizable name.)
• https://publiclab.org/wiki/pole-mapping (possibly, with @ekta64?)
• https://publiclab.org/wiki/open-water (which in turn will link to Riffle)

When naming new pages, some things to consider are that names should be:

• short and usable for tagging or telling someone about
• engaging to existing contributors and long-standing members of our community
• not jargony in a way that it blocks new people from accessing the topic -- think accessibility, but also think about how we can make our topics problem-based, rather than theory-based
• in alignment with terms people are searching for on the internet at large: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=aerial%20photography,aerial%20mapping,drone%20photography https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=infrared%20photography,multispectral%20imagery,ndvi

Looking ahead, we have more naming to do! There are some mismatched names:

• "dssk" vs. "desktop-spectrometry-kit-3-0"
• "infragram" vs. "infrared" vs "multispectral-imaging"
• "timelapse" vs. the broader" photo-monitoring"

We'd really like to hear from a wide selection of voices about naming! Please pile on in the comments! Thank you!