<div dir="ltr"><div>Back in 1990, things were almost always put in hierarchical taxonomies. The idea of "tags" and non-hierarchical categories wasn't really a thing, partly due to limitations of technology. The Dewey Decimal System (for books) and biological taxonomies ruled the day. And it was really frustrating, because so many things really can't fit into a single bucket. Even today, it seems like rigid taxonomies remain overused. <br><br>I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but it seemed relevant somehow, and I needed to rant. <br></div><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><font color="#888888"><br>Kevin Smith<br>Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation<br></font></span><font><font><i><font color="#888888"><br></font></i></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 1:48 PM, Grace Gellerman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ggellerman@wikimedia.org" target="_blank">ggellerman@wikimedia.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-psychology-of-genre.html?mabReward=CTM&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=2" rel="noreferrer" style="display:inline!important" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-psychology-of-genre.html?mabReward=CTM&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=2</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Favorite quotes from the article:</div><div><br></div><div>"This
“categorical perception,” as it’s called, is not an innocent process:
What we think we’re looking at can alter what we actually see. More
broadly, when we put things into a category, research has found, they
actually become more alike in our minds."<br></div><div><p>“Similarity
serves as a basis for the classification of objects,” wrote the noted
psychologist Amos Tversky, “but it is also influenced by the adopted
classification.” The flip side holds: Things we might have viewed as
more similar become, when placed into two distinct categories, more
different."</p><p>"Categorization affects not just how we perceive things, but how we feel
about them. When we like something, we seem to want to break it down
into further categories, away from the so-called basic level"</p><p>"When we struggle to categorize something, we like it less."<br></p></div></div>
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