Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/1/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm
<macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Unfortunately, there are people who think
categories are superior to lists
in all regards. I like to think there are exceptions.
Cats are superior? Since when??
I love cats, they taste like chicken. Oh wait...
A category can't have annotations, but that doesn't mean they're not
useful; some of us like our information in large unadulterated doses :)
One of the interesting differences is their role in
the actual process
of organising information (as opposed to the end result). Categories
are good when you spot a similarity between a number of articles and
want to start formalising that link. Lists are good when you see a
need for a set of related articles that don't yet exist.
Yes...
Both are ok for allowing navigation through sets of
related articles,
but IMHO navigation boxes are much, much better.
Navboxes don't obsolete categories though. Would you have a navbox for
"living people"????
Incidentally, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2004 edition
on CD) seems to
use hierarchical lists as its preferred method: At the bottom of an
article, you get a list with varying levels of indentation. Clicking
on an item takes you to another article guaranteed to have that same
list. It works pretty well!
Sounds a lot like an "expanded" category/navbox.
--
Alphax -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP