Re: [syndication] Re: RSS feed filtered by keywords?

["Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@ideaspace.net>]

> I couldn't disagree more.  Using keywords for discovery is what has
> gotten us to where we are today in the science and art of Information
> Retrieval.

And what a mess we're in.  But you know all this already.

> But I think there are two aspects to the use of keywords:
> 1) Discovering items out of the exact context of their authoring - in
> other words the author could not have anticipated the context of the
> reader.  Using keywords is the only way I know to do that.

That you know.  There more to this, I daresay a lot more than /most/ of us know.
I'm suggesting that almost any thinking about use of keywords without larger
considerations is nearly worthless.

> 2) Authors (almost physically) placing items in a designated context -
> in other words the author assigns his item to a catagory.   If the
> reader finds the context, they can find the items they want.  I think
> this is the case that you are thinking about and are forgetting about
> case (1) above.  This is where the author specifies catagories in their
> own feed - the author is then in total control of the context.

But if you call the category "work" what does that mean to me?  I have a
category called "clients", what would that mean to you?  Without larger maps
between your ideas of categories and topics it's as worthless as calling it "ham
sandwich".  Even using terms like "new, important, old" and the like are
semantically worthless without context.  WordNet is one possible out.  You make
categories, I make categories and we both go pick some WordNet URLs to further
define what we /mean/ within a given category or keyword.  THAT starts to make
it much more informative.  This is not just simple keyword filtering and yet a
keyword can be the 'easy to apply' metadata.  It's the background stuff that
makes it truly start to /mean/ something.

> >Ah, do I need to?  Or do I take advantage of a larger network of what my
peers
> >discover?  I'm telling you, this is going to be much more valuable than
trying
> >to make each person 'hyper informed'.
> >
> Sometimes that works .... sometimes it don't ... depends on how you are
> focusing on a particular topic.

Oh I certainly agree.  But if the only choice is dumb keywords it won't be worth
a damn.

> >Heh, yes the Syndic8 and other projects give me a pretty big picture.  There
> >are, at any given time, about 150k items in a day's feeds.  Something like
80mb,
> >IIRC.  It's not a massive amount.  It is just text after all and compresses
to
> >considerably less.  But it /is/ a lot of items.  And yes, it is tough to
"find"
> >the needle in the haystack.
> >
> Thanks, that's the answer to the question i asked here:
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0113759/2003/01/09.html
> ... to which I never did get a good answer  ... till now :)

Ask a better question and get better answers.  Sorta like keywords...  I saw
your question and recognized that it's a much more complex problem than can be
easily explained.

> >Whoa there, the point may not be to drag them into the mudpile and make them
use
> >the existing networks.  The point may be to create new networks that don't
> >involve slogging through the mud.
> >
> ... huh? .... could you elaborate? .... i have no idea what that means.

Think about it.  Most people are in the stone age with their understanding of
what it takes to effectively search for something.  They think just fobbing it
off onto Google is all the effort they need to apply.  That is until Google
tanks or becomes little more than a worthless pile of everything without
relevance.  I've used /real/ searching before on things like Lexis.  There's two
polar opposites, for the most part.  Google gives you almost no control and
Lexis demands too much.  There's a somewhere in the middle that users want.

It's my suggestion that since weblogs are, by and large, driven by individual
expression that efforts to utilize that aspect will be of more value than most
existing synthetic search tools.  The fact that google and what not /can/ be
used to search through this doesn't mean they should.

But without locally applied metadata using stuff like Google is the crude club
we'd be stuck using.

-Bill Kearney