[LINK] Categories for a community directory

[Paul Bolger]

What I was hoping for was to hook into an existing standard. I know
from experience that developing subjects/categories can consume huge
amounts of time which would be better put into gathering actual
content. Having a definitive standard also means not having to engage
in pointless arguments with collaborators over whether 'Yoga' really
needs to be a category in itself...

If I can't find a standard which looks like it can work fully I'll
have to follow plan b - which I think someone else suggested, that is
to allow users to add their own free text to 'none of the above' and
then harvest the most popular as new categories.

On 13 March 2012 00:58, Ash Nallawalla <ash at melbpc.org.au> wrote:
> Google doesn't like sites that use stubs, i.e. empty pages. My guess is that
> this is poor user experience when the majority of category links in a new
> directory lead to empty pages and it is also a waste of time to index such
> empty pages from the Google resourcing perspective.
>
> A developer could write extra code to mark such links as rel="nofollow" to
> keep Google ignorant about these pages, but you still have the issue of user
> annoyance.
>
> Ash
>
>> From: Roger Clarke
>>
>> At 18:21 +1100 11/3/12, Ash Nallawalla wrote:
>> >I didn't get the original message, but the SEO angle to this is that it
>> >is bad to have empty categories. If possible, allow users to suggest a
>> >category and then add it.
>>
>> Any idea what the rationale is behind the 'no empty categories' dictum,
> Ash?
>>
>> Is it 'just 'cos', i.e. the people who first did folksonomies just thought
> 'list' and
>> 'extensible';  and 'structured' and 'comprehensive' were out of sight and
> out
>> of mind?
>>
>> 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).
>>
>>  From a marketing perspective (and even non-profits do marketing), knowing
>> which segments you have strong coverage of, and which you haven't, can be
>> very handy.
>
>
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