Zen and the art of taxonomy maintenance. Regular posted 14 Jan 2005 in Volume 8 Issue 4 A masterclass covering the creation, implementation and maintenance of taxonomies in a corporate context. By Jan Wyllie The handful of sand looks uniform at first, but the longer we look at it the more diverse we find it to be. Each grain of sand is different. Some are similar in some way, some are similar in another way, and we can form the sand into separate piles on the basis of this similarity and dissimilarity. Shades of colour in different piles; sizes in different piles; grain shapes in different piles; subtypes of grain shapes in different piles; grades of opacity in different piles – and so on, and on and on… Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Pirsig, R.M., Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) The classic motorcycle The world beyond the machine Social constructions The conundrums of automation The benefits of human intelligence The next three articles.
MASTERCLASS: Zen and the art of taxonomy maintenance part II. Regular posted 17 Feb 2005 in Volume 8 Issue 5 A masterclass covering the creation, implementation and maintenance of taxonomies in a corporate context. By Jan Wyllie More and more people see it, or get a glimpse of it in bad moments, a ghost which calls itself rationality... The whys and what fors Last month, we addressed some of the philosophical questions about what taxonomies are and how they fit into information architectures.
Now the questions are: what are taxonomies for? How interests create perspectives For most businesses, profit and survival are the primary purposes. While the what’s-it-do-for-the-bottom-line question is easy enough to pose, it’s a lot harder to answer, especially as success must invariably be translated into hard figures: the so-called tangibles. Success and purpose are dependent on perspective and what people perceive to be their interests. The value of the bigger picture At the initial stage of any project, it is prudent to consider the bigger picture.
Workshop: Zen and the art of taxonomy maintenance Part III - Enterprise Information. Feature posted 5 Aug 2005 in Volume 2 Issue 2 A masterclass covering the creation, implementation and maintenance of taxonomies in a corporate context. Part : Designing for quality and logical consistency. By Jan Wyllie. From purposes to challenges Last month, the focus was on clarifying and agreeing purposes of a taxonomy project, and making a business case.
The three main purposes of using taxonomies were identified as information retrieval, intelligence discovery and supporting workgroup collaboration. This month, the focus is designing and building high-quality taxonomies that are fit to purpose. This inherent confusion creates one of the first challenges that any prospective taxonomy developer will face. Fighting articles of faith Along comes the taxonomy developer, full of bright ideas about how to do things better, asking for extra effort and presenting more to remember, while consigning all current practice to the dustbin. Like learning a language Guided collaborative process. Workshop: Zen and the art of taxonomy maintenance part IV - Enterprise Information. Feature posted 14 Sep 2005 in Volume 2 Issue 3 A masterclass covering the creation, implementation and maintenance of taxonomies in a corporate context.
Part IV: Implementation and maintenance. By Jan Wyllie Two perspectivesNow all the creative work – the thinking and the design of an organisational taxonomy – has been done, it is time to undertake what many people regard as the hard and unexciting bit; that is, all the tasks and processes involved in implementation and maintenance. The great danger with this kind of attitude, which effectively separates people from the processes that constitute their working life, is that it tends to leave out what Pirsig calls “the most important aspect of all”, which is caring. Riding a system of conceptsAn excellent description of a taxonomy would be as ‘a system of concepts worked out in words’.
If they are to work in any meaningful way, people need to learn to ride taxonomies to their knowledge destinations. Communicating the benefits. Taxonomies 3.0 « Trend Monitor 2.0. Taxonomy specialist Jan Wyllie, author of one of Ark Group’s biggest-selling special reports, is writing an updated report intended for publication before the end of the year. IK interviewed him about his reasons for bringing out a Third Edition. What’s new since the old report that makes it worth writing a follow-up? The report, which was written four years ago, does include sections on folksonomies and tagging over the new user made Web of blogs and wikis which was at the beginning of what is now called Web 2.0.
Now the millions who use the new free media of Web 2.0 just assign any descriptive words which come to mind, and hope to remember them, and that other people whom they would like to see their stuff will happen to use the same words. Yet we know that taxonomies, especially faceted classification, add considerable meaning and value to the information retrieval experience. Will it be all-new material or simply additional or re-written chapters? The plan is to publish in the autumn.