Hi Dani,
It's true that content is related to more than only one categories in
many cases. Yet not all categories can be easily represented with tags,
because as short labels they can't contain much "context" information.
If a file (or any piece of information) is simply about cars, we can put
up the tag "car". However, if there is a file (e.g. a PDF article) which
may become useful when I'm going to move my house, it will be hard to
categorize with tags. In principle, I can apply tags called
"house-moving" and "maybe useful later" to the file, but this will
create lots of long and ugly-looking tags that are so unique that only
few files use them.
As we don't know how many "would-be situations" there will be, using
tags to describe them will create considerable "noise" in the
information model. When tags are long, it will be difficult to remember
them during retrieval as well.
"Hm...I gonna move my house next month. I remember there's something I
can read about. What tags did I use to file them???"
Actually, keep lots of articles on various topics, some of the reasons
for keeping them are:
- This article will become useful when reviewing/forming my life plan
- This sample newsletter can serve as a template if the company I work
for are doing rebranding
- This will become useful when I want to write about why people can't
throw away their stuffs
etc.
If using TW to file these articles/information, I can probably write the
reasons for keeping as text notes, e.g.
Tiddler title="10 Tips on House-moving"
[[10 Tips on House-moving|file/h12938.pdf]]
!!!Notes
Great article to read about if I were to move my house.
Even doing so I can't guarantee I can remember the notes and use them to
help locating the exact file I want. Keyword search may help but the
result again there's no guarantee the keyword I think of during
retrieval matches the one I used in the notes.
On 2/5/2011 6:19, Dani Zobin wrote:
Hi
A word of introduction: I came to Tiddly recently, during my search of
a better tool to organize my content, which is usually text related
to diverse areas.
So this is what I'm after more than everything: effective ways to
organize unstructured content.
I basically feed very good about Tiddly for this aim.
And to the topic.
I'm sure many of us are coming originally from a background of
folders and files to organize their content.
Than, one day you figure out: this piece of content is related to more
than only one category. And my data model (directories tree) is not
expressive enough to reflect this fact.
Than tags step in - you can tag a piece of content by many tags. If it
only belongs to one - than great, tag it with only one tag. And here
we have a more expressive data model. Great.
But (!) on the way we lost something important . Hierarchical
structure hides from us the vast majority of our content, exposing on
each step only a small part of relevant content. This follows one of
our biggest natural cognitive limitations: *attention*.
*Tags, in the traditional form,fail to do so*. You have all your tags
at one big pile.
The idea of tags cloud tries to handle this problem, by showing the
most used tags bigger. But this is a statistical categorization, not
conceptual
So here is a claim: we need a way to powerfully categorize tags
themselves as well. And, be able to select them by categories whenever
needing to specify a tag (when searching by tag or
when applying a tag)
I'll suggest here an initial list of requirements for a feature that
follows the thoughts above
/- Be able to categorize existing tags, by applying other tags
(already possible in Tiddly) [example: apply the tag "vehicle" on the
tag "car"]/
/- When applying a tag, be able to create a new tag under an existing
tag [example: create the tag "subaru" under the tag "car" (that
himself is tagged by vehicle). Later, we'll be able to apply also
"Japanese products" on "subaru" but in the time of creation it will be
probably apropriate to limit categorization to one parent tag]/
/
/
/In two situations we need to specify tags, and this search for tags:
when applying a tag, when filtering by a tag/
/In this situation we need to be able to search for tags, exactly as
we're searching for content. Namely: by textual search - i.e. auto
complete (a plugin for this by Udo already exists) *and by tags*/
/So if I want to search info about a car that I recently saw and don't
remember the brand, I will type (or better be also able to use a GUI):
tags:car [here a dropdown will appear with all tags that are
themselves tagged by car, i.e. brands of cars] and I can now choose:
only filter by the main category - car, or continue and choose a
subtag: Subaru. /
/
/
/Whenever a Tidler is tagged by a tag, it will be automatically tagged
also by all parent tags. So when tagging a tiddler by Subaru, it'll be
automatically tagged also by "car" and by "Japanese product". (This
can be implemented at the time of tagging, or at the time of
retrieval. Should be transparent to the user.) /
/
/
Some more general thoughts:
Personally I feel that rarely more than 2 levels of hierarchy will be
needed. Maybe 3. But this 2-3 level are absolutely needed. I felt this
need many times since I started to insert content into my Tiddly some
week ago
My guess is that many may not feel strongly the need for the above,
because they don't use so much tags.
However, in my opinion, there is a great chance, that those people
would use much more tags, IF they had an efficient way to order and
retrieve them.
And more tags used is more captured meaning, and better abilities of
retrieval. I.e. more chances that you'll actually use what you wrote.
Hey guys, I hope for a positive resonance, for this post of mine.
I feel this is a key point, go ahead and share you thoughts.
Dani
P.S
Generally I'm a web developer, and even if more server side oriented,
I have some experience also with JS and JQuery.
If my excitement with Tiddlly will continue to be at high level it
currently is, there is a good chance that I'll jump one day into the
wagon of Tiddly development.
I'm not sure however how soon my time will allow this
So for now I'm throwing this idea here into the group, in order for it
to start getting feedback and resonating with other peoples minds.
I'll for sure be very glad if someone likes it enough to implement
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