Re: Categories

On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, sfritz wrote:

> Base categories
>
> Perl
> (all perl categories) (since we know perl is the main programming intrest..)
> Tech
> (related stuff, basically anything technical thats not directly Perl)
> General
> (LOTR, Foundations Edge, whatever)
>
>
>
> Perl
> 	Learning
> 	Using (Intermediate? couldn't decide which was better)
> 	Guru	(some stuff, (MRE) might end up in Using *and* Guru?)

I think you're confusing too many things here, like overall category
(fiction/non tech non fiction/tech) and level
(beginner/intermediate/advanced).

To get back to my original proposal, I think there's some serious
confusion, so I'll try to clarify.

First of all, I'm proposing that the categorization scheme be
hierarchical.  In other words, categories get progressively narrower
(think Yahoo).

So our highest level categories might be:

 - Fiction
 - Non-technical Non-fiction
 - Technical

Underneath we then get more speciifc:

 - Fiction
 -- Romance (love those Harlequin novels)
 -- Sci-Fi/Fantasy (or Speculative Fiction)
 -- Mystery

 - Non-technical Non-fiction
 -- Architecture
 --- Design
 -- Writing
 --- Comic books
 -- Politics
 -- History
 -- Linguistics

 - Technical
 -- Programming
 --- Languages
 ---- Perl
 ----- DBI
 ----- Mason
 ----- Tk
 --- Methodologies
 ---- Extreme Programming

The advantage to this is that when we have only a few books on a topic, we
simply put them in a high level category, like 'Non-fiction -> Politics'.
If that starts to get crowded, we create a few sub-categories like
'Non-fiction -> Politics -> Race' and 'Non-fiction -> Politics -> South
America'.  Of course, we can still put things in 'Non-fiction ->
Politics'.

Now, most categories will probably not go beyond 2 or 3 deep for a long
time, except for the Technical category which will probably get fairly
deep quickly.

This kind of hierarchy lends itself pretty naturally to web browsing
(think Yahoo) and searches.

One very important thing to note is that a book can be in _more than one
category_!

So for Uri's example of Mastering Regular Expressions, it'd be in:

 Technical -> Programming -> Regular Expressions
 Technical -> Programming -> Languages -> Perl

and maybe other categories.  The only sticky wicket that needs to be
decided is if a book can be in a parent and child at the same time, like:

 Technical -> Programming
 Technical -> Programming -> Perl

While I can see that there are probably a few books where that might make
sense there are good reasons to outlaw it, mainly in order to prevent
garbage from accumulating as new child categories are created and books
are moved into then.


-dave

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