[LINK] Categories for a community directory

[Jan Whitaker]

At 07:25 AM 12/03/2012, Roger Clarke wrote:
>A taxonomy has significant advantages, in particular structure and
>hierarchy, which give rise to clustering and even inheritance (e.g.
>all sports support groups have quite a bit in common and can learn
>from one another;  ditto for the various forms of mental health
>support).

Another benefit of having a starting group of common categories is 
that people then have something to work from and assign their stuff 
too without having to dream it up, at least at broad levels. I have 
found that sometimes I have to get close, rather than exact, when 
using them for our group inclusion.

What is nice about tags is that you can use multiple identifiers for 
one entity to connect across different angles, e.g.  charity, women, 
social, rather than just having to pick one. So that's a strategy 
Paul may want to consider.

To get new things categorised that may not have been considered at 
the outset, an 'other' or 'fill in your own addition' might be a 
useful strategy, and would also accomplish what Ash described. As 
those new terms come online, add them into the options for later 
folks to use so that category grows as well. Would take some 
programming thought for how that would be done, but I don't see why 
it couldn't.

HTH,
Jan



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
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