Subject:
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Re: Official and Unofficial theme categories
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.database
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Date:
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Fri, 8 Jan 1999 05:06:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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956 times
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"James Brown" <galliard@shades-of-night.com> writes:
> This may seem an odd question,
It's a great question!!
> but is this topic meaning to discuss how the
> database will be organized at a data level, or at an interface level?
Both -- mostly at a data level, with much of the implementation hidden at
the interface level, but with the interface level giving a view at the data
level if someone wants that fine of a view.
> If the former, this is probably irrelevant to the vast mojority here, so I'm
> assuming the later. (but it doesn't hurt to ask)
>
> If the later, then here's a suggestion:
>
> Have a tree which has only the official Lego theme/sub-theme designations.
Yup, that's a given -- gotta have that, at the very least.
> If
> you split things up otherwise, or add 'unofficial' themes, then you run into
> some difficulties:
> a) You will _never_ make everyone happy. Everyone will use a different
> criteria to judge what goes where, and will be irritated if they can't find
> things, or are constantly finding things they don't want to see.
The place where a lot of noise (unwanted info) will show up is in keyword
searches, for example typing "space" or "car" or "santa." IMO, if you type
"santa" you should get all the Santa sets, as well as links to related
things like elves and holiday sets in general.
Once you're at a data page -- and in browse mode rather than search mode --
there will be much less potential noise in your face and more structured
links with labels like "see also," "part of," and "contains."
> (a town
> purist may have a pathological aversion to trains or something)
A "town purist" who doesn't want to see train sets would want to look under
the LEGO Town System category then, rather than under the town category. :-)
> b) The deeper and more complicated the tree gets, the less people will use it.
Well, the idea is to hide as much of it as necessary so that things "just
work." I'm pretty jazzed up on how the piece-DB prototype works in terms of
searching -- it's got more than 600 categories all interlinked in zillions
of different ways, and on the whole to a human brain it's utterly
incomprehensible. But it's so complex that it's almost human in its
knowledge -- bringing it to a new level of usefulness.
> c) I'm not sure if this is an issue, but redesignating themes, or creating
> arbitrary ones may run contrary to TLG's Fair Play document
As long as any redesignations or arbitrary categories were duly noted as
such (i.e., unofficial rather than official), I can't see how it would be a
problem -- it's all "good-faith commentary."
> Obviously this isn't enough of a solution - there has to be something else
> available. How about a keyword triggered search? It's a fairly
> straightforward setup, and is familiar to about 103% of the on-line community.
I think both keyword-searches and various types of browsing are needed.
> I trust I don't have to go into detail on the advantages and drawbacks of a
> search engine?
You'd be preaching to the choir. :) But in any case, I'd love to hear any
thoughts you'd like to share...
- what you like about search engines
- what you dislike about search engines
- what you've never seen before in a search engine, but would like to see
- the most frustrating search-engine experience you've ever had
- the most enjoyable search-engine experience you've ever had
- etc.
--Todd
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Official and Unofficial theme categories
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| (...) I think I understand the concepts a bit better from reading other posts on this thread but just to make things clear (in my head) you're looking for something that would use a relationship key (or set designation, or fuzzy catagory) as it's (...) (26 years ago, 8-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.database)
| | | Re: Official and Unofficial theme categories
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| (...) Here's an example of what I mean by wanting things to "just work" -- and wanting the categories to be relatively transparent by default. If you type in "bike" into this element-search thingie, (URL) fails to find any pieces labeled as "bike." (...) (26 years ago, 8-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.database)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Official and Unofficial theme categories
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| (...) This may seem an odd question, but is this topic meaning to discuss how the database will be organized at a data level, or at an interface level? If the former, this is probably irrelevant to the vast mojority here, so I'm assuming the later. (...) (26 years ago, 7-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.database)
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