6 comments by 4 or more people

1. Chris May

   Why would you want to use XML to store the hierarchy? Wouldn’t it be easier for end users to just make an indented text file – say, something like

   Food
    Chips
    Cake
     Fruit Cake
     Sponge Cake
    Beer
     Lager
     Stout

   This would be faster to parse, and end-users could edit it without needing any special tools (though you could always make a tool, if you wanted).

   You can save files into Sitebuilder from anything that can talk HTTPS, either by automating the “upload file” page, or (much simpler) by using an Atom media upload:

   curl -k -v -u your_usercode --data-binary @datafile.txt -H 'Slug: Firefox_wallpaper.png' "https://sitebuilder.warwick.ac.uk/sitebuilder2/edit/atom/file.htm?page=/services/its/elab/somewhere&forcebasic=true"

   (That example uses HTTP Basic Auth and requires you to enter your password, but if you’ve got the sign-on cookies from the user’s session you can just as easily use single-sign-on.

   14 Sep 2007, 17:26

2. David Davies

   I can see the approach you’re taking but I have a couple of thoughts about this, especially in relation to separating the activities of tagging content from retrieving tagged content:

   1. Why have users taken so apparently well to informal tagging as a way of classifying material vs taxonomic classification? Simplistically maybe it’s because of either a) life’s too short to select keywords from a taxonomy either because it requires too much thought (tagging is quick in comparison) or the interface presented to facilitate using a taxonomy is poor, or the taxonomy doesn’t have the required granularity or b) there is no taxonomy available from which to select keywords.

   One of the key features of informal tagging is as you’ve described, there is no explicit taxonomic relation between tags. I say explicit because implicitly there is, at least in the mind of the person tagging – they are using their own internal classification system, something that’s meaningful to them, and possible others in a community of practice.

   There are very many formal classification systems or taxonomies to select from, so there can be no argument that there aren’t good classification systems to use. Yet generally they are not used. JORUM uses a number of classification systems but I gather from speaking to them they are having trouble getting contributors to use them, and are instead looking at an approach to tagging instead. I can foresee a potential paradox in an approach to formalise and informal tag cloud into a taxonomy. Accepting for a moment that someone actually can make a hierarchical taxonomy from a tag cloud, would the result then simply be another formal classification system with the same inherent disincentives to use it when tagging content? I like the fact that del.icio.us has not attempted to create taxonomies out of tag clouds and I’m sure it’s for a good reason.

   So the problem from a classification point of view is that by taking a tagging approach there will never be a formal taxonomy.

   2. Creating a tool that takes a taxonomic approach to searching for tagged materials requires that there is a taxonomy rather than a flat list of keywords. I’m not sure how you’d overcome the lack of a formal hierarchy in your taxonomic tool Rob when the tag cloud is informal. There’s probably little doubt that from a user’s perspective of retrieving tagged or classified content, a formal taxonomy improves the completeness of results. But there’s the rub, you don’t have a taxonomy. Again, using the del.icio.us example, auto-completion greatly speeds up storage and retrieval and I guess that’s one of the reasons they’ve stuck with that approach. Word stemming is another potentially useful approach but as with a taxonomy someone will have had to create the stemming dictionary. Instead I prefer del.icio.us’ use of tag bundles.

   If I misunderstood your project and the point is that your users will agree a taxonomic classification then there’s no problem, providing people stick to it when classifying materials. Which of course implies that they won’t be using informal tags…

   15 Sep 2007, 09:07

3. Robert O'Toole

   Thanks for that David. In the cases that I am dealing with, the authors already have their taxonomies. In fact in some of the cases, they have very large numbers of documents tagged with those taxonomies. They just need a better way of presenting the taxonomy within a search tool. I have a non-hierarchical tool already in use, but they really want a hierarchical tool.

   The search tool might prove to be more widely useful, or maybe not. Perhaps these cases will demonstrate the usefulness of taxonomies. But in these cases it fits nicely.

   17 Sep 2007, 08:12

4. John Dale

   I’m not sure that I’ve understood what kind of use cases would benefit from a hierarchical taxonomy. In the example widget you included the hierarchy is pretty trivial, and adds little value to a simple flat list (which of course is already possible). Can you explain what the actual taxonomies in the cases you’re dealing with would be?

   17 Sep 2007, 15:36

5. Robert O'Toole

   Hierarchy is important, although not necessarily the most important aspect of this. In each case, it has been identified as being beneficial. Note that in all of these cases the bulk of the taxonomy has been defined up front, and then applied to resources. In the case of History, it was the product of a process led by the Head of Department (Professor Margot Finn).

   Here’s the CAS Images taxonomy.

   And a full Renaissance Studies taxonomy (the one in the example above is just part of this). In this case they would like to be able to make it more hierarchical. The same taxonomy will be used for bibliographies of several different authors.

   And here is the simple taxonomy used for classifiying Sitebuilder pages in History.

   There are also other similar cases in English, History (a quite sophisticated bibliographical taxonomy), and the languages, not yet fully developed.

   17 Sep 2007, 17:04

6. Robert O'Toole

   Furthermore, consider the current CAS Images taxonomy. The People node just contains a long flat list of people. Would it be better in this scase to divide them up into further sub-categories? Or perhaps a second top level category (painters, writers etc).

   17 Sep 2007, 17:15