On 9/29/05, Dave Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Yes, it is a tricky one. I'm don't know what I'd like to do here. Here > are some responses to the points you brought up. > > > On Sep 29, 2005, at 12:53 PM, Allen Gilliland wrote: > > This indeed is a tricky situation. > > The way we allow for parent/child categories right now is pretty > > similar. What would happen to that if we allowed for multiple > > categories? I think we would definitely be pushing the complexity > > boundries if we allowed for both multiple categories as well as > > hierarchical categories, plus having tag support. > > I disagree. We'd be replacing a many-to-one with a many-to-many > relationship and that's pretty much it. > > I definitely agree that the existing hierarchical category (and > bookmark folder) code is complex and a somewhat confusing. Part of that > is due to the goal of making recursive queries possible with only one > SQL statement and supporting both categories and bookmark folders, but > it could definitely use some refactoring. > > > > On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 08:31, Dave Johnson wrote: > >> I agree with James. Weblog categories is a feature that is incomplete. > >> Most blog servers support multiple categories and we should too. > > > > true, but none of those blog servers support tagging and as Elias > > suggested, once you introduce tagging in many ways you probably don't > > need categories. > > Other servers are supporting tagging too. Pebble (by Simon Brown, used > by HP) is one example and I think it support both categories and tags. > I think LiveJournal is another. > > But yes, on second thought, it is appealing to rip out the complex > hierarchical cats code. I wouldn't mind doing that. Since both > categories and bookmarks use the hierarchy stuff, we'd use tags in the > bookmarks system too -- Roller would have del.icio.us built right in. > > Here's some data to consider. > > This blog software matrix seems to show that the majority of blog > servers DO NOT have hierarchical cats: > http://www.ojr.org/ojr/images/blog_software_comparison.cfm > > This one indicates that a majority of blogs servers DO support multiple > categories: > http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm > > No mention of hierarchical categories in this analysis of a corporate > blog server "win" > <http://www.corante.com/strange/archives/2005/06/13/ > dark_blogs_case_study_01_a_european_pharmaceutical_group.php> > or http://tinyurl.com/asrap >
Excellent research Dave. I'm really struggling to believe that people make good use of hierarchies when it comes to categories. I hate taxonomies for that matter too (I know I'll regret saying this). Did you guys get a big push to add hierarchies by the community? > Is hierarchy the fundamental difference between categories and tags? > What can you do with tags that Roller categories don't allow? Assign > multiple tags to each blog entry. Create new tags on the fly. Easily > query for tags across multiple blogs. We could modify Roller categories > to allow those things and be more like tags. > > So far I see three options: > 1) Complete categories by allowing multiple and add tags too > 2) Replace existing category (and bookmark folder) code with tags > 3) Refactor and rework existing category system so that it acts like > tags 3) sounds a lot like 2) as I understand it. Refactoring would mean you don't need to have categories created before using them (meaning tags) and that would also mean removing the hierarchical nature of categories, so in the end we would just have tags as 2). Before choosing between 1 and 2 I'd like to get your opinion if this has a chance of being included in 2.0. > > Other ideas? > > - Dave > >
