deviation

Wik.inormous.net is still in its early stages, but it is obvious that the project could benefit from having both categories and tags like WordPress. It seems to be difficult to create a similar system with MediaWiki. Current issues of creating a viable tag-system will be presented in part 2 of Categories and tags in MediaWIki.

In this part I will try to describe how categories and tags can be combined in a project like wikinormous. A useful way of separating categories from tags is to treat categories as boxes or containers and tags as labels. The difference could be exemplified with how unused items are classified and described in the garage of a well organised family. Things are sorted according to similarities into various boxes. The boxes contain tools, old clothes, toys etc.

There is a large variety among the things which have been put into the “box of toys”. The objects in the box can therefore be ordered into sub-categories as e.g. electronic toys, balls, dolls, lego etc.

Most toys have–in addition to their belonging to various categories of toys–also individual characteristics which can be described differently than according to the rules of classifications. A ball within the category of balls can be described or labelled as being small; brown with coloured spots; old; “It belonged to grandma” or “It’s my favourite ball”. These descriptions are separated from the other toys in the box and some of the descriptions are highly subjective.

Then, hypothetically, the owner of the brown ball with the colourful spots moves with his belongings from the house to a new home in which there are no children and far less toys. If the ball is once again thrown into the garage with other unused things, it can be differently classified since there is no need for a dedicated box for toys. This time the ball is put into the box of gifts. The ball is a classified into a new category due to the different character of the sum of items in the new garage compared with the stuff in the old house.

The tags or labels of the ball, however, remain the same as small; brown with coloured spots; old; “It belonged to grandma” etc.

It seems that the category which an item belongs to is dependent on the character of the other items in the “collection”. Tags are centred around a specific item.

In part two we move on to the problem of classifying and tagging pages in wik.inormous.net and in MediaWiki in general.

Addition:

There is certainly a difference between creating a taxonomy based on the objects which are to be classified or by using a ready-made classification, according tp which the objects in the “garage” are organised. However, the difference between tags and classificatons remains.

/ Kristian