RE: [dita-fa-edboard] RE: Categories on DITA XML.org

[Bruce Esrig <esrig-ia@esrig.com>]

Ah, thanks ... I tried it ... some feedback ...

1. (User-visible.) When I enter the tag, it is comma-separated. When I view 
the Categories (link on the right-hand side), the tags are not delimited at 
all, so a space-delimited tag is potentially confusing. You have to run 
your mouse over the terms to see which words are part of the same tag. 
Still, I like the space-delimited tags better. There's enough extra space 
between tags in the footer of an article so that it's not confusing.

2. I've got a linear list in the Taxonomy Manager. Hierarchy seems to be 
turned off at the moment.

3. Tags are a separate namespace, and the other vocabularies don't seem to 
play there. So although the doc advises that using multiple vocabularies 
can help make the tagging orthogonal (faceted), the interface is only 
offering me tags under Tags. (Basis for claim: I added "map hierarchy 
authoring" and "map relationship authoring", which appear under Product 
Features. They did not previously pop up in the autocompletion feature, and 
now they do.) So unless this changes, echoing the other vocabularies in the 
tags namespace will be a good idea.

4. The taxonomy manager page would be easier to use if it had navigation 
back from the page that shows the entries in a vocabulary to the list of 
vocabularies

5. It would be nice if there were a direct rename function. To rename a 
category, you have to add a category that has the new name, then merge the 
old category with the new one. If you want to correct capitalization of a 
category, you have to do this in two steps since the auto-complete 
mechanism is not case sensitive.

6. When renaming, there's a checkbox about relations. This seems to refer 
to relations among categories, so it doesn't need to be checked when your 
only goal is to preserve the connection between the tag and the content it 
references. The text could be clarified: "relations to other categories for 
the selected terms and add them for the merged term". (This function 
doesn't seem well-defined if you merge two sub-terms from different 
branches of a hierarchy.)

7. (User-visible) Are we standardizing on "Sentence case" or "lower case 
except for Proper Nouns" ?

8. I'll pretend I have a definitive answer on this one: "Categories" is 
correct when referring to the semantic notion that is represented by a 
"tag". The "tag" is a syntactic item that the user types in or applies to a 
topic. So "a user tags an item with a tag to indicate that it belongs in a 
category".

We have to apply this guideline to determine what the labels should be on 
the site. But note, we have a tagging mechanism that seems not to be 
comprehensive across all vocabularies. So we should probably call the 
vocabulary that can be used for tagging "Tags".

Best wishes,

Bruce

At 10:36 AM 10/31/2007, Carol Geyer wrote:
> >How do I tag an item?
>
>Go to the page, select the "Edit" tab, then the "Tags" field appears under the
>page "Title" and before the "Body" text box. Add one or more tags 
>(separated by
>commas) and hit "Submit". If you're not seeing this, let me know.
>
>--c
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Bruce Esrig [mailto:esrig-ia@esrig.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 5:36 AM
>To: Carol Geyer; 'Su-Laine Yeo'
>Cc: 'DITA Editorial Board'
>Subject: RE: [dita-fa-edboard] RE: Categories on DITA XML.org
>
>Wow, that maintenance strategy  (in Su-Laine's message "Removing the book
>hierarchy on DITA Wiki   pages") seems promising.
>
>1. Looking at the site, there are a lot of improvements. Kudos for that.
>
>2. How do I tag an iterm? Honestly, I looked for it and couldn't find it.
>
>3. I took a look in the taxonomy manager and I see multiple vocabularies.
>
>In building the tagging vocabulary, would it make sense to echo the other
>vocabularies by embedding them and their constituent terms in hierarchical
>categories in the tagging vocabulary? (I haven't learned yet how to nest
>categories ... ref: http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/taxonomy
>.)
>
>Would it be smart to merge the other vocabularies in completely and
>eliminate them as separate vocabularies?
>
>4. I tried the usergroups tag, and didn't notice the "Read more" link.
>Could we put "More ..." at the end of the article, or make "Read more" more
>prominent in some other way? Even changing the text to "More ..." might
>help, since that's a common idiom.
>
>5. The top few SEO items ("Cool site stats") suggest good tags: training,
>ant, cms, editor, opentoolkit, tutorial, tools, OASIS.
>
>6. Are we going with run-together words? I don't want to alienate people by
>getting too didactic, but we could start a lower camelCase spelling
>convention if we wanted to.
>
>Bruce
>
>At 03:20 PM 10/24/2007, Carol Geyer wrote:
> >Su-Laine,
> >Just to be clear, do you want me to change the 'Categories' link in the
> >vertical nav to read 'Tags' instead?
> >
> >I think this makes sense, but I realize Wikipedia uses 'Categories' and
> >'Topics', so I want to be sure we're using terms wiki-folk will relate to.
> >
> >(Our 'Taxonomy Manager' link is only visible to editors, so we don't need to
> >worry about that.)
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Carol
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com]
> >Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 9:08 PM
> >To: Carol Geyer; DITA Editorial Board
> >Subject: RE: [dita-fa-edboard] RE: Categories on DITA XML.org
> >
> >Are terms like 'tags', 'categories', 'topics' and 'taxonomy'
> >interchangeable, or do we want to standardize on one term?
> >
> > > We should use these terms for different things. For the new "tag"
> >feature I think we should always use the term "tag".
> >
> >Su-Laine
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Carol Geyer [mailto:carol.geyer@oasis-open.org]
> >Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 11:32 AM
> >To: 'DITA Editorial Board'
> >Subject: [dita-fa-edboard] RE: Categories on DITA XML.org
> >
> >Neil has installed the category module and created a tag for
> >'usergroups' to
> >get the ball rolling.
> >
> >Now, when creating a new wiki knowledgebase page
> >(http://dita.xml.org/node/add/book), users will be presented with a
> >'tag'
> >field. The field has an AJAXy effect that autocompletes tags with
> >already
> >defined ones.
> >
> >Pages that have been tagged will display the tag in the page footer
> >links, e.g.
> >http://dita.xml.org/user-groups.
> >
> >The EdBoard can delete, add, and merge tags by clicking on the 'Taxonomy
> >Manager' in the vertical nav. (Non-editors don't see this link.)
> >
> >Anyone can view the complete list of tags from the 'Categories' link
> >(http://dita.xml.org/categories) in the vertical nav. We can make this
> >link
> >more prominent if we want.
> >
> >Please take a look, play around, and let me know what you think.
> >
> >Clueless question: Are terms like 'tags', 'categories', 'topics' and
> >'taxonomy'
> >interchangeable, or do we want to standardize on one term?
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Carol
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Su-Laine Yeo [mailto:su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com]
> >Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 4:55 PM
> >To: Carol Geyer; DITA Editorial Board
> >Cc: Greg Rundlett; Neil Joseph Schelly
> >Subject: RE: [dita-fa-edboard] Categories on DITA XML.org
> >
> >Thanks Carol.
> >
> >The requirements you list are good. Another important one is that the
> >user can navigate from a topic to a list of topics in the category, and
> >then from the list to any other topic in the category. The idea is that
> >categories help you find content related to the topic you're currently
> >viewing.
> >
> >For example, if you start here:
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clippy
> >
> >You can click the "Technical communication" link at the bottom to see a
> >list of all other technical communication topics. This is how readers
> >most often use categories.
> >
> >For maintenance, the software should also let us merge and rename
> >categories.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >Su-Laine
> >
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Carol Geyer [mailto:carol.geyer@oasis-open.org]
> >Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 1:27 PM
> >To: 'DITA Editorial Board'
> >Cc: 'Greg Rundlett'; 'Neil Joseph Schelly'
> >Subject: [dita-fa-edboard] Categories on DITA XML.org
> >
> >As agreed on yesterday's call, I've asked OASIS IT to install a
> >categories
> >module on DITA XML.org.
> >
> >Drupal has several different approaches to this, so I want to be sure IT
> >is
> >aware of all our requirements. Here's what I think we said we want:
> >
> >-allow authors to tag their pages with one or more pre-defined topic
> >categories
> >
> >-allow authors to create new topic categories freely
> >-allow visitors to search for content from a list of topic categories
> >
> >Are there other requirements we should note, especially with regards to
> >how we
> >display the categories?
> >
> >Wikipedia seems to offer an alpha list, and an index
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorical_index. Other sites,
> >e.g.
> >http://folktunes.org/tags, offer a tag cloud display (which Drupal
> >supports
> >http://drupal.org/project/tagadelic).
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Carol
> >
> >
> >_________________________________
> >Carol Geyer
> >Director of Communications
> >OASIS
> >+1.978.667.5115 x209
> >
> >Register now for the Open Standards Forum:
> >"Enabling Transformational Government Through Web Services and SOA"
> >29-30 Oct 2007  *  London
> >http://events.oasis-open.org/home/forum/2007
>
>
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