[drupal-devel] what do you call a rose?
Hi! Despite what Shakespeare says about the name of the rose (What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet), it's still more convinient to call it a rose, simply because (lot) more people would know what are you talking of. "free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree. Regards NK
Really. I can't be ###ed about those people that do not look any further then their noses length. If a user thinks drupal is not right for her/him because it has no folksonomy support, I, personally am very happy to say 'goodbye, and have a nice life'. If people are confused by names, and only by names, we are doing something very wrong. You do not recognise a rose by its name alone. Even if I call my cd-player a rose, it will never be one. Why? its because I have learned to recognise a CDplayer. Even if it is a B&O cd player (they dont look like cdplayers at all). So, how do I then know a B&O cdplayer is one, and not some oddly shaped bookshelf? ITs because of the links I make, the surrounding parameters i can link to it: it stands in the window of a cd-player-selling-shop, for example. Or the fact it carries a play button. So, to get back to this ever continuing lets call it this and that and we solve a lot of trouble discussion: If the only thing one can recognise folksonomy by, is its name, we not only demand a lot from users who have no clue at all yet (there are a lot who have never heard folksonomy). But we also assume that the only thing we can make folksonomy, folksonomy is its name. And that is not the case. If it is, we have a usability problem, but in this case it is not. Free tagging, with help, examples, a different UI, etc is really enough for people to know what its about. And last, but certainly not least: folksonomy is about community tagging. Free tagging is not. And we do not (yet) offer community tagging, in the pure sense of folksonomy. Ber On Thursday 29 September 2005 09:21, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
Hi!
Despite what Shakespeare says about the name of the rose (What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet), it's still more convinient to call it a rose, simply because (lot) more people would know what are you talking of.
"free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
Regards
NK
"free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
There was a long discussion about this in the IRC channel when I was developing free tagging. In short, it's named "free tagging" because folksonomy is a cute buzzword that doesn't mean anything. Likewise, there are so many different kinds of folksonomies (such as delicious, where any user can tag any content, or Flickr, where you only tag your own), none of which Drupal currently supports. And, I disagree with you at a most basic level: anyone who thinks "categories" is a good idea is, in my opinion, just plain ol' wrong. -- Morbus Iff ( masochism-oriented recombinant bot (unlisted series) ) Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779 Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus
Karoly Negyesi wrote:
"free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight.
For what it's worth, I had never in my life heard the word "folksonomy" before I read the changelog (I had never heard the word "taxonomy" before I came to Drupal either, but at least a dictionary helped me with that ;)). Free tagging makes sense to me, especially if "folksonomy" actually means something different than that (community tagging, as Bèr said).
On 29 Sep 2005, at 09:21, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
"free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
Today, I attended a presentation on 'usability in content management systems'. According to their research, one of the key problems is the use of technical jargon and system details/internals being exposed to the user. According to them, the answer to the following question should be 'yes': Does the system use natural, non-technical language? I tend to agree, and don't regret changing 'taxonomy' to 'categories'. Furthermore, I'm all for renaming 'path alias' to 'custom URL'. I'll continue to commit patches that eliminate technical jargon from Drupal. We don't name insects by their Latin/classification name either; we don't care what the insect is really called or how it ought to be classified. Unless you are John VanDyck, a bug is a bug. PS: I attended 10 CMS presentations given by commercial CMS vendors today. Quite an eye opener ... -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Dries Buytaert wrote:
On 29 Sep 2005, at 09:21, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
"free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
Today, I attended a presentation on 'usability in content management systems'. According to their research, one of the key problems is the use of technical jargon and system details/internals being exposed to the user. According to them, the answer to the following question should be 'yes':
Does the system use natural, non-technical language?
I tend to agree, and don't regret changing 'taxonomy' to 'categories'. Furthermore, I'm all for renaming 'path alias' to 'custom URL'. I'll continue to commit patches that eliminate technical jargon from Drupal.
The problem here is: Who is the user? Is it the admin of a site? Or is it the user registering on a site. For that latter kind of user I do agree with you, for admins I do not. Luckily all my own sites are in German, so I don't _really_ care. Cheers, Gerhard
I am all for user friendly terms. Both to the admin and the end user. Categories is much better than taxonomy. It gives the user an idea of what they are. When a programmer lists features that are useful to end users, they should not gloat about how their application is superior because it uses linked lists, b-trees, ...etc. What matters is how these things are useful to the end users. I am not interested in the details of how my car engine functions. I just need it to run ... Remember the original description of taxonomy, and how it relates to information theory? That may be interesting to informatics people, but not anyone else ...
Does the system use natural, non-technical language?
I tend to agree, and don't regret changing 'taxonomy' to 'categories'. Furthermore, I'm all for renaming 'path alias' to 'custom URL'. I'll continue to commit patches that eliminate technical jargon from Drupal.
The problem here is: Who is the user? Is it the admin of a site? Or is it the user registering on a site. For that latter kind of user I do agree with you, for admins I do not.
I completely agree with use of user-friendly terms, and think that changes like this one (from Taxonomy to Categories), is nothing less than make the things obvious (in my point of view a need). That kind of change also reduce the learning curve of Drupal, wich is a threat for new admins *and* developers... GD ----- Oorspronkelijke bericht ----- Van: Khalid B Verzonden op: 30/9/2005 15:11
I am all for user friendly terms. Both to the admin and the end user.
Categories is much better than taxonomy. It gives the user an idea of what they are.
When a programmer lists features that are useful to end users, they should not gloat about how their application is superior because it uses linked lists, b-trees, ...etc. What matters is how these things are useful to the end users. I am not interested in the details of how my car engine functions. I just need it to run ...
Remember the original description of taxonomy, and how it relates to information theory? That may be interesting to informatics people, but not anyone else ...
Does the system use natural, non-technical language?
I tend to agree, and don't regret changing 'taxonomy' to 'categories'. Furthermore, I'm all for renaming 'path alias' to 'custom URL'. I'll continue to commit patches that eliminate technical jargon from Drupal.
The problem here is: Who is the user? Is it the admin of a site? Or is it the user registering on a site. For that latter kind of user I do agree with you, for admins I do not.
Categories is much better than taxonomy. It gives the user an idea of what they are.
Hm, I can see I was writing in too convoluted style: yes categories are much better than taxonomy. However, I am _not_ sure that free tagging is better than folksonomy. From that Google stats I feel the average Internet user are faced a lot more with folksonomy than with free tagging. But again, it's entirely possible that free tagging is understandable to the average English speaker. I can not know. Regards Karoly Negyesi
Hold on a minute. Let's put things in perspective here with using Google as a measure. The "average" internet user is not using the term "folksonomy". Web developers are. And that's the results you see on Google: more web developers use the term "folksonomy" than "free tagging". But the end-user audience for Drupal is not---or at least should not be---web developers. So the question is, not which is more popular among web developers, but which is easier to grasp by the end-user. Your average end-user doesn't use the term "folksonomy" or "free tagging." But clearly, "free tagging" is much more accessible than "folksonomy" to the average user because it uses simple english words. Folksonomy is far to abstract to be meaningful. On 10/1/05, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
Categories is much better than taxonomy. It gives the user an idea of what they are.
Hm, I can see I was writing in too convoluted style: yes categories are much better than taxonomy.
However, I am _not_ sure that free tagging is better than folksonomy. From that Google stats I feel the average Internet user are faced a lot more with folksonomy than with free tagging. But again, it's entirely possible that free tagging is understandable to the average English speaker. I can not know.
Regards
Karoly Negyesi
-- Dondley Communications http://www.dondleycommunications.com Communicate or Die: American Labor Unions and the Internet http://www.communicateordie.com
On 30 Sep 2005, at 19:10, Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
The problem here is: Who is the user? Is it the admin of a site? Or is it the user registering on a site. For that latter kind of user I do agree with you, for admins I do not.
Often, Drupal is setup by a techie, IT department or hosting company. However, in many cases that techie is not the content creator/maintainer. So, the user of the administration section is (typically) the content creator/maintainer. It could be virtually anyone. -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/
On Friday 30 September 2005 22:20, Dries Buytaert wrote:
Often, Drupal is setup by a techie, IT department or hosting company. However, in many cases that techie is not the content creator/maintainer. So, the user of the administration section is (typically) the content creator/maintainer. It could be virtually anyone. Here you 'hit the nail on its head'! When I create taxonomy trees for a client i call one tree "site categories" another one "places" and maybe another one "image galleries".
So, yes /I/ am the one translating the techy interface language towards my users. the end users (people reading the latest kernel news, editors adding content etcetc) should only read and see what I as developer leave there for them: pure non techie terms. But when I assign an administrator, I tell her/him to read a few entries on drupal.org that explain what nodes, users, roles, taxonomy, themes, modules etcetc are. He/she needs to know these things to be a successfull admin. It is like that car: I only drive in it, and do not need to know how the engine works, but I /DO/ hope the guy at the garage knows what a piston is, and how my engine works. So calling that piston a 'thingy that makes the engine go vroom' is good enough for me. But not for the engineer. Likewise, calling a taxonomy *tree* 'site categories' is fine, but the administrator, who makes these trees, needs to know how the stuff works and thus needs some education, and thus will learn what a taxonomy is and does. Teaching him about 'categories that can be hierarchical and interlinked' is harder then telling him to read some stuff about 'taxonomies'. Bèr
So, yes /I/ am the one translating the techy interface language towards my users. the end users (people reading the latest kernel news, editors adding content etcetc) should only read and see what I as developer leave there for them: pure non techie terms.
But what is true for you is not true for others. I work with many clients who are on a very restricted budget. They can't afford to pay someone to translate technical jargon into more understandable terms. Also, there are many, many places within Drupal where help files and terminology commonly used by end-users ("weight" is a good example), is unnecessarily hard to grasp. -- Dondley Communications http://www.dondleycommunications.com Communicate or Die: American Labor Unions and the Internet http://www.communicateordie.com
On Saturday 01 October 2005 13:21, Steve Dondley wrote:
But what is true for you is not true for others. I work with many clients who are on a very restricted budget. They can't afford to pay someone to translate technical jargon into more understandable terms. This is where preconfigured installs like CS or on Btyght come to play. But more important: If someone has no budget, she will have administer Drupal herself, and thus will need to know technical things.
If I cannot afford an engineer to fix and maintain my car, I will need to learn how the engine works.
Also, there are many, many places within Drupal where help files and terminology commonly used by end-users ("weight" is a good example), is unnecessarily hard to grasp.
True. But renaming 'weight' to 'ordering' will not help. The concept we have currently is 1) hard to grok, and 2) very hard to get right in an UI. Above all this -again- is an interface problem. Bèr
Bèr Kessels wrote:
It is like that car: I only drive in it, and do not need to know how the engine works, but I /DO/ hope the guy at the garage knows what a piston is, and how my engine works. So calling that piston a 'thingy that makes the engine go vroom' is good enough for me. But not for the engineer. Likewise, calling a taxonomy *tree* 'site categories' is fine, but the administrator, who makes these trees, needs to know how the stuff works and thus needs some education, and thus will learn what a taxonomy is and does. Teaching him about 'categories that can be hierarchical and interlinked' is harder then telling him to read some stuff about 'taxonomies'.
Just because taxonomy is changed to categories in the UI doesn't mean it must be completely eradicated from the manuals. So when the administrator read the handbook, like any good administrator should do, and get an explanation that says that this 'thing' actually is an taxonomy, he will probably get an idea what to look for to learn more about this in general. .danne
Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
Does the system use natural, non-technical language?
1) I 110% support using language in the UI that caters to admin/user understanding of the interface rather than "technical accuracy". 2) From my professional experience, only a non-devloper who has never even seen the code is fully qualified to give a subjective opinion as to what's intuitive and what's not. Developers should respect that opinion as the software is ultimately designed for them. -- Harry Slaughter <-> harry@slaughters.com SMS: 6192498780@messaging.sprintpcs.com http://www.slaughters.com/
Well, I would argue that "URL" is jargon. I'd say at least 7 out of 10 people wouldn't know what that is. How about "web page address" or something similar? There is a HUGE psychological effect that goes on when someone encounters a technical term. People feel stupid and have doubts about their abilities even if they are extremely bright people. It makes it real tough to teach people when the jargon gets in the way. Something like "web page address" uses simple, pre-existing plain english and though they might not understand the concept immediately, it's a hell of a lot easier to digest. On 9/30/05, Dries Buytaert <dries@buytaert.net> wrote:
On 29 Sep 2005, at 09:21, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
"free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
Today, I attended a presentation on 'usability in content management systems'. According to their research, one of the key problems is the use of technical jargon and system details/internals being exposed to the user. According to them, the answer to the following question should be 'yes':
Does the system use natural, non-technical language?
I tend to agree, and don't regret changing 'taxonomy' to 'categories'. Furthermore, I'm all for renaming 'path alias' to 'custom URL'. I'll continue to commit patches that eliminate technical jargon from Drupal.
We don't name insects by their Latin/classification name either; we don't care what the insect is really called or how it ought to be classified. Unless you are John VanDyck, a bug is a bug.
PS: I attended 10 CMS presentations given by commercial CMS vendors today. Quite an eye opener ...
-- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/
-- Dondley Communications http://www.dondleycommunications.com Communicate or Die: American Labor Unions and the Internet http://www.communicateordie.com
I object to folksonomy because it's another example of inventing new words when perfectly good English words already exist. Using the term "folksonomy" might be great for web developers to talk about, but when you are trying to make a tool useful to everyday people, you use plain langage. No, plain language isn't as precise as jargon, but it doesn't need to be when you are talking to end users. On 9/29/05, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
Hi!
Despite what Shakespeare says about the name of the rose (What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet), it's still more convinient to call it a rose, simply because (lot) more people would know what are you talking of.
"free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories... it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
Regards
NK
-- Dondley Communications http://www.dondleycommunications.com Communicate or Die: American Labor Unions and the Internet http://www.communicateordie.com
participants (12)
-
Angie Byron -
Bèr Kessels -
Daniel Nilsson -
Dries Buytaert -
Dries Buytaert -
Gerhard Killesreiter -
Gustavo Dias -
Harry Slaughter -
Karoly Negyesi -
Khalid B -
Morbus Iff -
Steve Dondley