discuss: Preview of categories
Subject:
Re: Preview of categories
From:
Dan Scott ####@####.####
Date:
18 Feb 2005 04:40:03 -0000
Message-Id: <fbb0d11d05021720391968bdf4@mail.gmail.com>
Hmm.
As a certified (but non-practicing) professional librarian, I
understand the methodology but would like to note that it is open to
abuse. (Full disclosure: I'm employed by IBM and work on IBM DB2
Universal Database.)
The methodology appears to be "Group things by quantity" -- which is
fine, except in the case of Databases (5.1.3.1) it has led to MMBase,
Oracle, and Sybase being the primary subcategories, with Ingres, DB2,
and others being relegated to "Others".
Now, the 'abuse' is that applications wishing to increase their
visibility could simply submit multiple, slightly different HOWTOs,
thereby earning a category of their own and bumping a potential
competitor back into the "Others" category. For example, this metric
would have encouraged Ian Hakes and I to keep the "DB2 Version 7
HOWTO" around as well as the new "DB2 Version 8 HOWTO". Instead, we
did the right thing and simply replaced the Version 7 HOWTO with the
Version 8 HOWTO. (For real abuse, I suppose we could also have split
the HOWTO up into distribution-specific HOWTOs rather than collecting
them together). Of course, TLDP will hopefully reject separate
submissions that are obviously not driven by user need, but there are
arguably already examples of this in the collection today.
I suspect that the real underlying problem here is breaking a category
down by product name. That actually introduces an inconsistency into
the categorization system, which in almost every other branch is
broken down by the purpose of the technology.
The second issue is that classifying content management systems like
MMBase and PHP-Nuke under the DBMS category is questionable. Content
management systems are often built on top of databases, but they serve
a much narrower scope of purpose and should be placed in their own
category (as a peer of databases, I would suggest).
Otherwise, this seems like a very good step in the right direction.
Dan
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:16:23 +0100, Stein Gjoen ####@####.#### wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As mentioned earlier the report from Gerd Berget is finished. However
> there is no English translation available yet. To get the ball rolling
> and to get the announcement published I have gotten permission to
> extract the proposed new categories and those are near the end of this
> message.
>
> The report itself is more than 100 pages (A4 format) and translating it
> will take a while. To give an overview, chapter by chapter:
>
> 1 : Introduction
>
> 2 : Brief Introduction to GNU/Linux
>
> 3 : The Linux Documentation Project
> That is about the organisation
>
> 4 : HOWTOs
> This chapter describes the nature of a HOWTO. Note
> that guides, FAQs and the like is not in the scope
> of this report
>
> 5 : Categorising
> This chapter relates the methodology of Librarian Sciences
> applied to the HOWTO collection. This chapter argues that
> - a multi label approach is most suitable for categorising
> - categories should be on same level, as opposed to, say,
> one primary and a number of secondary categories
> - up to 3 categories per HOWTO is optimal
>
> 6 : Developing a Hierarchy of Categories for HOWTOs
> This is the main part of the report where
> - categories are defines
> - and related to the existing scheme
> - specific HOWTOs are placed into new categories
>
> 7 : Final Suggestion of Hierarchy of Categories for HOWTOs
> Summary of work. It is noted that
> - number of levels of categories has been increased
> - hierarchy has been extended with 2 new top level categories
>
> 8 : Further Work
> Discusses possible projects such as
> - including categories in documents
> - using XML for this, with validation
>
> 9 : Summary and Experiences Gained during Project
>
> 10: References
>
> Appendix A : Final suggestion of hierarchy of categories for HOWTOs
> This part is available in English and is quoted here:
>
> 1 Installation of the GNU/Linux OS
> 1.1 Installing GNU/Linux
> 1.1.1 Platforms
> 1.1.2 Switching from Other Operating Systems
> 1.1.3 Distributions
> 1.1.4 Hardware RAID
> 1.1.5 Installation
> 1.1.5.1 Aquiring Installation Files
> 1.1.5.2 Handheld Devices
> 1.1.5.3 Installfest (installation assisted
> by experienced GNU/Linux Users)
> 1.1.5.4 Installing GNU/Linux in Addition
> to Other OS
> 1.1.5.5 PLIP (Parallel Line
> Interface Protocol)
> 1.1.5.6 Remote Installation
> 1.1.5.7 Upgrading
> 1.2 Using GNU/Linux
>
> 2 System Administration and Configuration
> 2.1 Benchmarking
> 2.2 Boot Loaders and Booting the OS
> 2.2.1 Grub
> 2.2.2 Lilo
> 2.3 Clustering
> 2.4 Data Storage
> 2.4.1 Backup
> 2.4.2 Recovery
> 2.4.3 Software RAID
> 2.5 Kernel
> 2.6 Parallel Processing
> 2.7 Partitions and File Systems
> 2.7.1 GNU/Linux in Addition to Other OS
> 2.7.2 Network
> 2.7.3 Recovery
> 2.7.4 Security
> 2.7.5 Specialized File Systems
> 2.8 Printing
> 2.9 Security
> 2.9 1 Bridging
> 2.9.2 Encrypted File Systems
> 2.9.3 Firewalls
> 2.9.4 User Authentication
>
> 3 Hardware
> 3.1 CPUs / Architecture
> 3.2 IO Device
> 3.2.1 Input Device
> 3.2.1.1 Graphic Tablets
> 3.2.1.2 Keyboard and Console
> 3.2.1.3 Mouse
> 3.2.1.4 Scanners
> 3.2.1.5 Touchscreens
> 3.2.2 Output Device
> 3.2.2.1 Printers
> 3.3 Multimedia
> 3.3.1 Image
> 3.3.1.1 Cameras
> 3.3.1.1.1 Digital Cameras
> 3.3.1.1.2 Web Cameras
> 3.3.1.2 Video
> 3.3.1.2.1 Video Cards
> 3.3.2 Sound
> 3.3.2.1 MIDI / Sound Cards
> 3.4 Networking Hardware
> 3.4.1 Modems
> 3.4.2 Routers
> 3.4.3 Serial Ports
> 3.4.4 Wireless
> 3.5 Platforms
> 3.5.1 Brands
> 3.5.2 Laptops / Handheld Devices
> 3.5.3 Network
> 3.5.3.1 Clusters
> 3.6 Power Management
> 3.7 SCSI
> 3.8 Storage Devices
> 3.8.1 CD-ROM / DVD-ROM Drives
> 3.8.1.1 CD-ROM
> 3.8.1.2 DVD-ROM
> 3.8.2 Diskettes
> 3.8.3 Hard Disks
> 3.8.3.1 Maintenance
> 3.8.3.2 Management
> 3.8.3.3 RAID
> 3.8.3.4 Security
> 3.8.4 Jaz and ZIP Drives
> 3.8.5 Optical Disks
> 3.8.6 Tape Drives
> 3.8.7 USB Memory
> 3.9 Miscellaneous
>
> 4 Networking
> 4.1 Data Transport
> 4.1.1 Bridging
> 4.1.2 Protocols
> 4.1.2.1 LDAP
> 4.1.2.2 PLIP
> 4.1.2.3 PPP
> 4.1.2.4 TCP/IP
> 4.1.2.4.1 IP
> 4.1.2.4.1.1 IPv6
> 4.1.2.5 Other
> 4.1.3 Routing
> 4.2 LAN
> 4.2.1 Ethernet
> 4.2.2 Thin Clients
> 4.3 Internet Access
> 4.3.1 DSL
> 4.3.1.1 ADSL
> 4.3.2 Modems
> 4.3.3 Optimization
> 4.4 Security
> 4.5 Services
> 4.5.1 DNS
> 4.6 Telephony / Satellite
> 4.7 VPN
> 4.8 Wireless
> 4.9 Miscellaneous
>
> 5 Applications / GUI / Multimedia
> 5.1 Applications
> 5.1.1 Installing Applications
> 5.1.2 User Applications
> 5.1.2.1 Communication
> 5.1.2.1.1 Chat
> 5.1.2.1.2 E-mail
> 5.1.2.1.3 NetMeeting
> 5.1.2.1.4 Voice Data
> Communication
> 5.1.2.2 Data Compression
> 5.1.2.3 Entertainment
> 5.1.2.3.1 Games
> 5.1.2.4 Formatting Tools
> 5.1.2.4.1 Text Editors
> 5.1.2.5 Science
> 5.1.2.6 Web Browsing
> 5.1.3 Server Applications
> 5.1.3.1 DBMS / Databases
> 5.1.3.1.1 MMBase
> 5.1.3.1.2 Oracle
> 5.1.3.1.3 Sybase
> 5.1.3.1.4 Other
> 5.1.3.2 E-mail
> 5.1.3.2.1 Cyrus
> 5.1.3.2.2 Qmail
> 5.1.3.2.3 Sendmail
> 5.1.3.2.4 Other
> 5.1.3.3 Usenet Network News
> 5.1.3.4 HTTP / FTP
> 5.1.3.5 Miscellaneous
>
> 5.2 GUI / Window Managers
> 5.2.1 X Window System
> 5.2.1.1 Configuration and Use
> 5.2.1.2 Key Functions / Keyboard / Mouse
> 5.2.1.3 XDM and XDMCP
> 5.2.1.4 Xfree86
> 5.2.2 Window Managers
> 5.2.3 Fonts
> 5.3 Multimedia
> 5.3.1 Image
> 5.3.1.1 DVD
> 5.3.1.2 TV
> 5.3.1.3 Video
> 5.3.2 Sound
> 5.3.2.1 File Formats
> 5.3.2.1.1 MP3
> 5.3.2.2 Sound Drivers
> 5.3.3 Standards
>
> 6 Programming
> 6.1 Software
> 6.1.1 Compilers
> 6.2 Languages
> 6.2.1 Bash
> 6.2.2 C and C++
> 6.2.3 Java
> 6.2.4 Tcl
> 6.2.5 Other
> 6.3 Tools
> 6.3.1 Shell
> 6.3.2 C and C++
> 6.3.3 Java
> 6.3.4 RPM
> 6.3.5 Libraries
> 6.3.6 Version Control
> 6.4 Interfaces / API / Protocols
> 6.4.1 SCSI
> 6.5 Security
> 6.6 DBMS / Databases
> 6.6.1 Oracle
> 6.6.2 Other
> 6.7 Miscellaneous
>
> 7 Security
> 7.1 Hard Disks
> 7.2 Networking
> 7.3 System Administration and Configuration
> 7.3.1 Bridging
> 7.3.2 Encrypted File Systems
> 7.3.3 Firewalls
> 7.3.4 User Authentication
> 7.4 Programming
>
> 8 Human Language Support
> 8.1 Using Specific Languages
>
> 9 the Linux Documentation Project
> 9.1 LUGs
> 9.2 GNU/Linux Advocacy
> 9.3 GNU/Linux Support and Knowledge Resources
> 9.4 GNU/Linux Documentation
> 9.4.1 LDP Author Guide
> 9.4.2 Document Formats
> 9.4.2.1 DocBook
> 9.4.2.2 LinuxDoc
> 9.4.3 Writing Online-documentation
> 9.4.4 Categorizing the Documentation
> 9.4.5 Reviewing
> 9.5 GNU/Linux Events
>
> 10 Hobbies and Special Interests
> 10.1 Accessibility
> 10.2 Amateur Radio
> 10.3 Science
> 10.4 Miscellaneous
>
> Appendix B : Relocating HOWTOs in hierarchy of categories
> This part is available in English but is too big to
> be quoted here.
>
> This is a brief overview, unfortunately time and scope does not allow me
> to include the thorough and extensive arguments given for the choices made.
> I do however believe this should be sufficient for initial discussions
> and for sending out the announcement.
>
> Doing the relocation will no doubt also take time and I am hoping we can
> make a new announcement once the job has been completed and our readers
> can navigate the extensive TLDP library using the new structure.
>
> Best regards,
> Stein Gjoen
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>
