Information Mapping

The Information Mapping method is a research-based approach to the analysis, organization, and visual presentation of information. ...

Awfully it is NOT open! Even the term is trademarked by infomap.com But maybe it is allowed to borrow some global ideas.

The concept that there are basically six (seven) different types of information:

• Procedures → steps
• Process description → explanations
• Structure → descriptions
• Concepts → definitions and examples
• Principles → rules
• Facts → physical characteristics
• (Classification → types and categories)

And the four basic principles for guiding the formatting decisions:

• Chunking → Is all the information broken down into non-divisible chunks?
• Labeling → Are all chunks of information assigned an appropriate label?
• Relevance → Is everything within a chunk of information essential to the audience's needs?
• Consistency → Are hierarchical labels consistently applied to tell readers where they have been and where they are going?

-- FranzJosefSilli - 01 Oct 2004

Wouldn't it be great to have a Wiki supporting DITA?

From Wikipedia:

DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. The architecture and a related DTD was developed by IBM.

DITA is organized around the principle of the topic as the highest level structure and is intended to support the reusability of content.

...

-- FranzJosefSilli - 20 Oct 2005