Table of Contents

Plan for the structure of the VHS wiki

Feb 2026 - first draft

  1. Tools page - /tools - a high level overview of tools we have at VHS
  2. Group pages - /wiki/groups/* - for every area that has a committee, create a page like /wiki/groups/3dprinting/ with info like:
    • what tools need training
    • how to get training
    • rules, policies, guidelines
    • links to training guides, login/booking pages, etc. (e.g. laser.vanhack.ca and booking.vanhack.ca for the laser)
  3. TBD - for the rest of the info on the wiki we will need a small number of sections not related to a specific tool or a committee.

This is different from the old “areas” pages, because those were mapped to physical locations at VHS. This is mapped to committees, which have become much more important at VHS since the time when most of the wiki was structured.

Some decisions to make:

  1. do tools belong to committees? i.e. do we move the individual tools from /wiki/tools/hammer to /wiki/area/woodshop/hammer or /wiki/area/woodshop/tools/hammer? Leaning towards keeping tools separate, because multiple committees may have involvement with a single tool
  1. what is the url pattern for these new committee sections?

This plan is quite different from the current, ad-hoc, structure. e.g. the laser cutter has a whole section in the tools directory. i.e. there is /wiki/tools/laser_cutter/training and /wiki/tools/laser_cutter/msds and about 25 other pages. This plan would keep /wiki/tools/laser_cutter as a single page with basic info about the laser, and then move everything else to /wiki/groups/lasercutter/ (or something similar)

Proposed sections of the wiki:

  1. VHS - rules, codes, guidelines, howto for events, what is a shhh
  2. Groups - or Committees or Areas, see above
  3. Resources - pages with general info, like https://vanhack.ca/wiki/food - but move things like the individual “member written guides” into the Group it's related to - e.g. if it's an arduino guide, add it to the Electronics group

current "sections" of the wiki based on the sidebar:

  1. VHS
  2. Wiki
  3. The Space
  4. Resources
  5. How To
  6. Events
  7. Policies

current "sections" of the wiki based on directory structure:

  1. admin
  2. arc
  3. area
  4. committees
  5. events
  6. hacks
  7. infrastructure
  8. knowledge
  9. minutes
  10. playground
  11. policies
  12. retirement
  13. shhh
  14. tidyspace
  15. tools
  16. tutorials
  17. vhswiki
  18. wiki
  19. wikiattic