[WikiEN-l] Category destruction

[Marc Riddell]

on 5/2/07 1:54 PM, Andrew Gray at shimgray at gmail.com wrote:

> On 02/05/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> Perhaps this is why we are having a problem finding common ground in this
>> discussion. I am looking at WP Categorization strictly from the POV of a
>> reader.
> 
> ...from the point of view of a high-level specialised reader who wants
> to do somewhat complex searches on datasets, though, not from the
> point of view of the average user. Very different beasts.
> 
>> I came to your library, went to your catalogue system, and found it
>> did not meet my needs as a researcher. You, as the librarian, asked me what
>> my needs were, and I told you. Your answer seems to be that we cannot meet
>> your needs without revamping the entire system. I say: OK, I'll wait :-) -
>> as long as you are serious about doing so.
> 
> My problem is this: we cannot revamp the entire system to meet your
> needs, in the way you suggest, *without breaking it for everyone
> else*; we cannot start increasing the number and size of categories
> without making them much harder to use as a navigational tool.
> 
> Basically, there's a division here between metadata and search.
> Categories are metadata, applied to the individual articles. Opening a
> category and looking at it is a very crude form of search, surprising
> though it may seem at a first glance; it tells you all the articles
> listed under that particular heading.
> 
> You want to do a more advanced form of search, on a larger scale than
> simple navigation, producing results like "all rivers in Eurasia" or
> "all people who were born in the 20th century". There are two ways to
> do this:
> 
> a) Add more metadata, but keep the existing 'search'. Start slapping
> on more categories onto articles, so that - to pick an example - "1987
> births" is joined by "1980s births" and "20th century births"
> 
> b) Get a better search, but keep the existing metadata. Develop a
> search system that can parse the existing categories, combine them in
> various ways, and spit out a list for the researcher.
> 
> (a) is quick and dirty, but has problems; it makes it harder to
> navigate the existing category system from the point of view of the
> normal reader. It also rapidly becomes unworkable if we start thinking
> about more complex searches than just "the members of all daughter
> categories" - imagine if we had "1980s births of folk singers" and
> "20th century births of folk singers" and all the other possible
> intersections of the already-existing categories being added to pages!
> There are just so many possible category intersections for any given
> page... this really won't scale.
> 
> (b) is elegant, and scales well. It has the major advantage of being
> completely disassociated from the metadata, unlike our existing
> 'search' method, as it's overlaid on top; it doesn't impact in any way
> the existing system beyond perhaps making us streamline and
> rationalise it a little.
> 
> Unfortunately, it needs someone to go write it. This is what's holding
> things up.
> 
>> All I am asking, in this age of creative technology, is that someone step up
>> and create a system that can meet the needs of as many of our readers as
>> possible.
> 
> And all I'm asking is that if we're wanting to create a system, we
> create a system, we don't try to make the existing one sort-of-useful
> for everyone at the price of making it not-really-useful to anyone :-)

Andrew,

Thank you for all of this. I'm learning.

If the right persons, with the right know-how, really believe a new system
is needed, and are committed to creating one - I believe we'll have one in
time.

Hey, I'm the long-haired (literally) psych researcher, with his mind in
someone else's, needing some outside information; knocking on the library
door saying "I need to find some stuff, can you help me locate it?"

Marc

-- 
If you're restricted to what is - you are cut off from - - what could be.