A View From the Towers
Created | Updated Jun 20, 2003
I don't know about you but we at 'The Post' just love a good bit of juicy gossip and finding out about things that are going on behind the scenes :-). We just so happen to have stumbled
on a fantastic little tidbit during an innocent game of bowling... 'Categorisation'.
What is categorisation you may ask? Well, it is simple... categorisation is a way to make it easier for researchers to locate specific entries by subject. As for immediate changes you will see with this new way of surfing the Guide, there will be a three-subject top level that will be easy to guess for fans of the Hitchhikers books.
What the system will do is to enable members to browse through the Guide by subject, and will, hopefully, both provide an interesting way to explore the Guide, and a way to find specific topics. It will also enable members to spot where the gaps in the Guide are, which should help the calls for entries.
Now, mind you, this is still in the planning stages, and it will be a while before you see the results of their brainstorming in action. Our source at the Towers tells us that they are aiming
to have this up and running by the end of January, but that the date is not carved in stone.
They have very nearly gone through the whole Approved Guide, giving a subject category to every entry, and relegating any entries from the launch that no longer fit the approval criteria. The Towers hope to have done the actual categorisation in about a week, and then
they will still have to polish off the tools so that it is a delight to use. Finally, the Guide will be 'visible', and people will be able to see it's actual content, which will hopefully make a huge difference to the Guide itself.
There are plans in the works to also allow members to categorise their own entries as well, which should increase activity for those entries and areas of the unapproved Guide that are currently a bit hard to find. They will also be accepting recommendations for new categories and subjects from the community, but they will wisely reserve the expansion of the tree for the in-house team, to avoid people creating insane subjects.
