[Theforum] Re: Sub-categories

Chris Spruck cspruck at mindspring.com
Sat Dec 15 19:15:07 CST 2001


At 06:41 PM 12/15/01 -0500, rudy wrote:
>the bigger problem is how to wrap our minds conceptually around the idea
>that an article can belong to more than one category
>
>- how to specify them on the submission form
>- whether to keep the concept of a "main" category
>- should an article's multiple categories show along with the synopsis
>- how do the categories affect the search logic
>
>and most importantly
>
>- who's gonna code it (it's not easy)

All great questions, Rudy. I pictured it along the lines of d.e.o. where 
there'd be a parent level and children e.g. Code:Perl, Code:JavaScript, and 
so forth, but didn't take the thought process as far as you did.

>a much bigger bang for the buck, if i can offer an opinion, is to be
>rigorous in defining useful categories, and moving articles if necessary

+1

>if "code" is too vague, replace it -- at the same level -- with several new
>categories

I actually had thought of this, but pretty much dismissed it as the easy, 
inelegant way out. Plus, I wasn't sure if there was any historical 
precedence, since I hadn't gone through 100% of the archives on this. I see 
no reason to not have any sub-cats we're envisioning as top level cats. 
Definitely easier to handle from the code standpoint and fewer clicks for 
the user.

>subcategories, in my opinion, would be a mistake
>
>multiple categories for an article is a much more workable idea, but
>(again, just in my opinion) not necessary

Given further thought, I absolutely agree. I have the partial list of 
articles that Dan sent to the list a while back and have already jotted 
down a few possible ways to organize things. When I fill in the gaps a 
little more, I'll post back and see what people think.

Chris





More information about the theforum mailing list