Monday, August 01, 2005

The Problem of Where to File: Is it Possible to Construct the Perfect Classification System?. If you are still creating hierarchies to organize your data (say it ain't so!) this article pretty much closes the case: you shouldn't. "Because hierarchies has been the designated one size fits all solution to all our organizational needs, we break our semantically pure hierarchies by overstretching their bounds. As a result, we end up with messy hierarchies that are unusable and unmaintainable." What, then? Two major alternatives are considered: tags, and faceted classification systems. I tend toward the latter, because as the author notes, "tags are too flexible for their own good." Via elearningpost. By Mimi Yin, OSAF, August 1, 2005 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 4:40:23 PM      Google It!.