[LINK] Categories for a community directory

[Roger Clarke]

At 9:20 +1030 13/3/12, Brenda Aynsley wrote:
>I did point paul privately to an organisation that has been doing this
>for decades in connectingup.org.  their 'yellow book' is the definitive
>services guide and has been online for a number of years now.

Useful, thanks, and very recent:
http://directory.connectingup.org/

They've chosen to use 19 major categories (list below).

A quick inspection suggests that an organisation can only be under 
one category.  That's a problem, e.g. guide dogs could arguably be 
all of:
*   Animals & Birds
*   Material & Practical Needs
*   Personal & Family Support

There's no sub-structure, and there seem to be no tags to learn from. 
(I saw Paul's post this morning only after I sent my last email - and 
Paul's looking at the upper-level taxonomy / lower-level folksonomy 
approach).


I used my own and some of my wife's involvements as test-cases.

For ISOC-AU, use Comms and Info Services I guess, but there are 516.
Internet gets 128 across all categories, 19 within that category.

For APF, use Civil & Legal, but there are 233.
Privacy gets 4 across all categories.  (Memo to us: put APF in!)

For dogs, use Animals & Birds - 280
Dog gets 70 across all categories, 14 within that category.
(ACT-Queanbeyan alone has at least 4 or 5 obedience and agility 
training clubs, plus lots of breed-specific associations.  The peak 
body Canine Council isn't even there.  Nor guide dogs.  Ah, guide 
dogs are under some other category - but I can't see which, i.e. 
Category should be displayed).

For bird-watching, use ditto
Bird-watching and Bird watching get 2, Birdwatching 5, Ornithology 0, 
Ornithologists 5 (i.e. there may be some syntactic synonyms in the 
scheme but they're not root-based such as Ornith*;  and it seems not 
to support semantic synonyms).  All are local, without mention of any 
of the large bodies.

For grasslands conservation, use Environment & Heritage - 317
Grassland(s) conservation got 0, Grasslands 2

For native plants, use ditto
Native plants got 17, 5 within the category

Definitely progress.  But I they could have done better by:
-   looking at ISIC and ICNO before they designed their categories
-   asking for tags, and maybe auto-generating some

______________________________________________

	*	Accommodation
	*	Animals & Birds
	*	Citizenship & Nationality
	*	Communication & Information Services
	*	Community Organisation & Development
	*	Education
	*	Employment
	*	Environment & Heritage
	*	Finance, Income & Business
	*	Health
	*	Industry & Professional
	*	Civil & Legal
	*	Material & Practical Needs
	*	Personal & Family Support
	*	Public Safety
	*	Recreation, Sport, Arts
	*	Religions & Philosophies
	*	Rural Organisation & Development
	*	Transport

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University