[LINK] Categories for a community directory

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Ash Nallawalla 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.
> 

I'll second this. The google/search engine perspective is important if not 
vital.

Tagging/Keywords are the way to go. A piece of information can be
categorised/viewed in lots of contexts.

The current directory categories for Annandale on the Web
<http://ramin.com.au/annandale/ > are:
*Art, Music & Food
*Community
*Business Services
*Abode (hardware etc but you can't say "Home")
*Useful Numbers and Websites (emergency numbers etc)

While the Main menu options are: What's on | Art, Music & Food | Community
| Walks | Plants | Birds | Insects | Heritage Festival | History | Business
Services | Transport | Abode | Water | Eco-Annandale | Editor | Useful
Numbers and Websites | Contact Us/Subscribe to Alert/Share an Anecdote (RSS
News FEED)

Since 1998, I have encoded DC metadata into the HTML content of Annandale
on the Web. However, the discussion we had on link, a little while back,
concluded that DC is dead.

The ABS, ATO, ASIC, Business Name Registration Authorities, Licensing
Bodies or the equivalent in other jurisdictions have organisational
categories.

For a demonstration of Tagging/Crowd Sourcing check out
http://trove.nla.gov.au


Marghanita
> 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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-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
Ramin Communications (Sydney)
Website: http://ramin.com.au
Phone:(+612) 0414-869202