Catagory heirarchy

Sorry, I thought someone had already explained "@" links to you.

You can easily see that Alternative Medicine is "apparently" but not "really" under Medicine by comparing the total number of links under Medicine with the total number of links under each of its subcategories. The discrepancy is due to the fact that the A.M. links are not "really" under Medicine. Or you could simply click on the "Alternative Medicine@" link, and looking at the actual page where you ended up.

This is another way in which taxonomy is not always straightforward. While it is true that pharmacists and homeopaths agree that one is not a "subclass" of the other, it is also true that "subclass" and "superclass" are concepts ("ideals") -- mental constructs. Since not everyone constructs the same mental model of the world, we often include these "@-links" to accommodate conceptualizations that don't match the "standard scientific" model.

For instance, Archaeology (like other Science categories, but where I happen to edit) has a similar @link to an "Alternative Views" containing sites that Archaeologists would almost universally agree in not calling "Archaeology" ("crackpot" might be the preferred term.) I edit there partly because I have read enough that I can generally distinguish between mainstream and idiosyncratic views. The ODP taxonomy reflects the mainstream view (in most respects this would be as taught in any reputable college or university on any continent) in generally objective terminology, and where possible supports alternate conceptualizations via these "virtual subcategories." (This is of course not the only use for @-links. Sometimes there are several generally-acceptable alternative subcategorizations, and @-links are also needed to support that. But where there is one mainstream and one non-mainstream subcategorization, the @-link will generally be used for the non-mainstream approach.)

>>"your argument for exclusion of Christianity"

I wouldn't know how to make any such argument. I'm with Jonathan Swift on that issue.

>>Can you or can you not change the hierarchy?

Here's a pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow. Can you or can you not dig the Nicaragua Canal? Of course you can. If, that is, you can convince the people who are using the land already, that they should give it to you. And if you are willing to invest the sweat.

Go ahead. Hire a professional taxonomist -- Library Science major. Better yet, hire three. You'll need them for at least 2-3 years. Find a deficiency in the taxonomy that's recognized by dozens of editors already. Convince the editors in Religion that numbers suddenly matter, bearing in mind that we Christianity editors have been telling them all along that numbers don't matter (and making decisions as if numbers don't matter.) Revisit all those issues based on the assumption that numbers do matter, and show that many old problems won't be revived if we change this fundamental assumption.

Learn that "it seems logical to ME" is no argument at all: because we've all known too many insane people. Since the ONLY argument that works is "it is generally recognized, and can be usefully extrapolated," recognize that the current structure was not only successfully defended, but successfully introduced with just this argument; discover the fallacy, and come up with a persuasive way of disabusing the editorial community. Gain several years' experience at dealing with practical and theoretical problems of taxonomy. Prepare a mockup of the new proposal, presenting it not only to ODP staff but also to the management and technical people at our major licensees (Netscape/ODP, Google, etc.)

Remember that lobbying in an outside forum -- any outside forum -- is completely ineffective. It takes more than a human "X" chromosome to get a ballot, sweat equity is essential.

If after doing all this, you are willing to spend the 2-3 years it will take, then yes, you can submit a proposal to dig your canal to the Republic of Nicaragua's Ministry of the Interior.

Axacta,
<<I will reverse your question to you - why should it make a difference to you if Christianity were to be placed on the Home Page in the second tier? >>

It does not matter to me. I am saying I do not believe the ODP should base it's structure upon "popularity" or a "user" request based upon their belief that it is of greater importance than other sub-categories in the same classification. The ODP/DMOZ is the most level playing field that I know of.
I still cannot believe you are still pushing this point which does not make any sense at all /images/icons/frown.gif

>Sorry, I thought someone had already explained "@" links to you.<

Someone did, and I also already responded to them. These @links are about execution not the appearance of the directory.

>It is NOT (by experts in Medicine) considered to be a PART or KIND of "Medicine."<

Your argument was based on what you claimed "experts in Medicine" think, but now you argue as though it was about execution of the directory. And for that matter it matters not to me if you use the same execution for Christianity as you do for Alternative Medicine - whatever works - but based on the more than abundant times I have explained my position, Christianity should appear on the Home Page in the second tier.

>If after doing all this, you are willing to spend the 2-3 years it will take, then yes, you can submit a proposal to dig your canal to the Republic of Nicaragua's Ministry of the Interior.<

Somehow I thought it would come to this. So I am not qualified to suggest an improvement to the directory, therefore my suggestion must be wrong. Well, I've got to admit, that is a pretty hard position to argue against.

OK I give up. It would be so easy for you to say, "Well Axacta, you may have a point worth discussing and examining - we'll suggest that those who are responsible for making the decisions on the Home Page take a look at it. But instead I get this 'tude of, "How dare you..."

Well this "bud" has had enough. You win - but the directory looses...

Axacta,
<< Well this "bud" has had enough. You win - but the directory looses...>>

I hope no offence was taken as I certainly did not try to offend anyone /images/icons/wink.gif
I think if you look at all of the major directories and search engines available you cannot help but agree that the ODP/DMOZ directory has the most level playing field for "all" those that submit their sites.

Have A Nice Day /images/icons/smile.gif
Dave S.

Re: Catagory hierarchy

>>It would be so easy for you to say, "Well Axacta, you may have a point worth discussing and examining - we'll suggest that those who are responsible for making the decisions on the Home Page take a look at it.

Yes, that would have been a civil and professional reply, and all that was necessary.

However, please give credit to several posters who replied politely and seriously. They represent the standard of courtesy which is required inside the ODP.

>>So I am not qualified to suggest an improvement to the directory<<
I think this is probably the core of the difference You see it as an improvement, but I (and I suspect others) see it merely as a change. It doesn't matter how it's layed out as long as it works. It works as is, and the amount of person hours required to effect such a huge change could be much more productivly used getting sites listed.

Sorry, but you are probably beating your head against a brick wall here.

I don't think it's a case of 'we win, you lose'. At worst the discussion makes us think about how/why things go where they are. I'm sorry that this has gotten a little out of hand, but I don't see a deal of understanding of each others position from either side.

One thing I really don't understand though is why you want to change the look of the directory. Very few people use it as a directory, most people end up coming to the directory via search engines and have no idea what 'level' they are entering, just that it has the site they were looking for.

Ciao /images/icons/smile.gif

Many times the discussion comes up of hierarchy.
Often the discussion is why a site or subject being listed should be listed
'higher' in the ODP tree...
(actually further down the tree, closer to the root, aka: Top/).

I'm a little bit odd in that personally, I believe that a site
is better off being listed 'low' (further from the root).

If I were a programmer creating a search engine that used ODP
data from the RDF dump, I would use the full category path...

Top/Category1/Category2/Category3/Category4

...as a tool to determine more about the site. Webmasters add meta tags to
'help' their listings with search engines. What I'm saying is that
'category1', 'category2', 'category3' and 'category4' would all become part of
the site description. Imagine the full category path as 'meta tags' on steroids.

Therefore if my bizarre theory has any merit, I would think that
webmasters should be asking...
"Could you PLEASE move my site to a subcategory?" /images/icons/smile.gif
VJL

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>Quoth Axacta:
Your argument was based on what you claimed "experts in Medicine" think, but now you argue as though it was about execution of the directory.<p><hr></blockquote>I'm not exactly sure dictinction you're making between what expert claim and "execution". Alternative medicine and normal medicine are at the same level in the heirarchy because (according to experts) alternative medicine is not a sub-category of medicine. However, because many people using the directory might think that it is a sub-category of medicine, we put an @link to it under the medicine category to help them find what they're looking for. If we were to make the real alternative medicine category a sub-category of medicine, and then put the @link in the top level Health category (the opositie of how it is now), we'd be saying that, in our opinion, alternative medicine is a sub-category of medicine. So it's not just mere execution; where the real categories go and where the @links go says something about what we think the logical structure of the topics are.<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr><p>And for that matter it matters not to me if you use the same execution for Christianity as you do for Alternative Medicine - whatever works - but based on the more than abundant times I have explained my position, Christianity should appear on the Home Page in the second tier.<p><hr></blockquote>Your abundant reasons seem to be:

• The Christianity category is much bigger than all the other categories under Society/Religion_and_Spirituality
• All of the hard work that the editors of the Christianity categories have gone through.[/list:u]Overwhelmingly, ODP editors have rejected those as good reasons. Having a huge number of sites, or the editors having put in a huge effort, is not a good reason (in our opinion) to move a category up closer to the top of the heirarchy. It's extremely unlikely that you or anyone else will ever convince us otherwise. If you could convince us that directory users are expecting Christianity to appear directly under Society, and are confused by it not being there, then we'd put in an @link to Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Christianity/ from the Society category. However, it's pretty unlikely that you'd convince us of that either, since those users will see the Religion and Spirituality category, think "Oh, it must be under there", and they'll be right.
  
  Now, if we put Christianity directly under Society, it might save some people some time, since they wouldn't have to take that extra second or so to see the Religion and Spirituality category and click on it, but that's not enough reason to move the Christianity either.

"When DMOZ was started, there were 0 sites. There are many ways to organize this type of data. Staff came up with an initial structure to begin with. I do not know what it was based on, but you've got to start somewhere."

It was based on the structure of Usenet.
from this article comes a quote from Rich Skrenta, one of the founders of the directory:
"We toyed with the Dewey Decimal System, but it didn't really seem to fit well with the content on the web. Eventually we hit on the idea of using a list of Usenet groups as an outline for our category structure. That would provide representative breadth for what people talked about on the Internet. I took a long list of groups and hand-edited them into a hierarchy,"

Some more history can be found in the articles under this category.

-sam