Re: channel classification

[Ian Davis <id@openjava.org>]

On Monday, July 05, 1999, 9:00:08 AM, james wrote:

> From: "james@xmlTree.com" <james@xmltree.com>

> Dear Mark and Carmen and Dave (and whoever else is interested in classification),

>> So the actual categories that the publisher can choose from, how does that
>> get decided? I don't think it's a good idea to allow channel publishers to
>> create new categories; that would be a mess. A centrally-managed list would
>> be idea, but probably impractical - do we want to give this a try?

> The centrally-managed list is not impractical if it already exists and is well understood
> and documented.  Candidates for such a central list might be:

> Group I
> 1) Newsgroups structrure (like comp.text.xml)
Ugh! These are a complete mess because of all the politics, infighting
and general ill-will amongst usenet members.

> 2) Yahoo
> 3) Open Directory Project

This group gives the greatest potential IMVHO, they've evolved to meet
the need of the users of the sites and reflect 'real-world'
categorisations.


> Group II
> 4) Library of Congress classification
> 5) Dewey Decimal System

These are the traditional contenders but I feel that they're overly
complex for our needs. Of the entire Dewey classification I believe
that we'd only be using a very small subset, very far down into the
hierarchy. Plus, how do we cope with more general purpose sites?
GeneHack is a popular weblog that is interested in Computers,
Technology, Films and _Microbiology_!!! How do even begin to classify
an individual's tastes? See below for what I think is the best
approach.



>> Hopefully, selecting the channel from a large list at the aggregator will be
>> only one method of adding channels. Netscape had the right approach in
> I agree - there should be alternative ways of finding channels, such as by traditional
> free-text search, or by keyword navigation (see an example at
> http://www.xmltree.com/metadata/search.cfm and excuse the quality of keywords; inspired by
> http://www.aeiwi.com)

i think the keyword search is excellent and presented in the right way
it can be a very intuitive way of narrowing a search. The Dublin Core
Subject element as used in OCS is freeform text and putting specific
keywords there would make a lot of sense.


.id.

-- 
weblog - http://alchemy.openjava.org/
me - http://www.fdc.co.uk/people/iand/ 
email - iand@fdc.co.uk | icq - 4423828