[Debtags-devel] Re: Debtags Library

[Benjamin Mesing]

Hello,

> > > Then you raise another issue: do we want multilevel facet/tag
> > > hierarchies?
> > I do want. ;-) For example for file formats.
> 
> My other proposal was: why don't we tag facets instead?  We're all here
> to do something better than static hierarchies, we could just apply our
> very same method to our own categorization problems :)
> 
> I mean, instead of doing this:
> 
>   tech::format::file::ogg
>   tech::format::stream::ogg
>   tech::format::encoding::vorbis
>   tech::protocol::http
> 
> We do this:
> 
>   fileformat::ogg
>   streamformat::ogg
>   dataformat::vorbis
>   netprotocol::http
> 
> and this:
> 
>   fileformat: tech, format, file
>   streamformat: tech, format, stream
>   dataformat: tech, format, encoding
>   netprotocol: tech, network, protocol
> 
> Then we split the problem into a Package Browser, that looks for
> packages, and a Facet browser that looks for facets.  Then you say
> "Don't bother about any 'technology' tags: just give me the 'usage'
> ones"...
> 
> I had this idea while writing the previous message, and I'm quite
> excited by it: is there something wrong in it that I'm not seeing?
Here we are nearly at an idea I had some weeks ago - why not tag the
tags instead of using facets - this is nearly the same but one level up.
It seems to be a great idea, else it could happen that a user have to
spent the time he saves by using debtags for searching for the correct
tags to choose. But I would strongly suggest to keep the number of
possible tags for the facets (lets call them facettags) low. 
I also would suggest against a packagebrowser and an additional
packagebrowser as it offers a new layer to be considered by the user. I
think this might reduce the acceptance of debtags because it would make
the whole thing more complicated. Searching should become easier not
more complicated. I can't imagine users would like it to search for the
keywords (tags) they have to use in an extra search process.
Thinking about it the approach above would lead me to a three level
hierarchy:

facettags
 |
 +- facets
     |
     +- tags

Where the two inner levels would be selectable (i.e. facets and tags).
Besides: Is there any reason against using implications to create deeper
hierarchies (i.e. subcategories)?

> > Thinking more about the data we have and we do work with, maybe we
> > should go all the way down to RDF.
> > If we could keep all the stuff so generic it can work with any RDF we
> > might be able to do a crazy amount of things (like browsing blogs using
> > facets... ;-) )
Hmm... what the hell is RDF? I think I will have to do some reading.

> 
> Another idea I had was to make an Internet Tag Archive, and when people
> browse the web they tag the pages, the tag data gets merged and there's
> a unique super power bookmark website accessible for everyone.
I guess one could consider the <meta name="keywords" ...> tag to offer
the tagging here.


> I WANT LIBTAGCOLL EVERYWHERE!!
There are a lot of occasions where I would have loved to have it. This
goes from the browser bookmarks and does not end with the filesystem
("Where the hell did I put the image of the mars? In the astronomy or in
the images directory?").

Greetings Ben