Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 17:03:09 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> Cc: JJ Behrens <jj@nttmcl.com>, Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org>, Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net>, Michael Sierchio <kudzu@tenebras.com>, Drew Tomlinson <drew@mykitchentable.net>, bmah@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: organic documentation Message-ID: <3CD3253D.1500D66@mindspring.com> References: <200205032346.TAA15927@glatton.cnchost.com>
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Bakul Shah wrote: > > Aside from the classification problem (everyone has to classify > > the same way for them to be able to get the information out), > > the human factors argue that the depth should not exceed 3 on > > any set of choices, before you get to what you want (HCI studies > > at Bell Labs confirms this number). > > It is interesting to note that the plan9 people from the same > Bell Labs are using a wiki for "information pertinent to > installing, configuring, and using the operating system Plan > 9 from Bell Labs."! > > http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/plan_9_wiki/index.html This is a perfect example of "everyone has to classify the same way". It also demonstrates the other problem of hierarchical categorization, which is that it's impossible to get a single document with all the information on it so it can be linearly searched (e.g. via a browser "find text"). You end up having to provide a seperate search facility (the Plan 9 wiki lacks one of these), and index the content to make it searchable. This generally isn't very satisfactory in realization, even if you provide such a search function, since what's an important keyword or key phrase to you is often not important to the indexing software (simple indexing fails to identify phrase matches at all, and you are stuck with a phrase being treated as unordered keywords). A good example of why simple indexing is bad is the search facility for the FreeBSD mailing list archives. The facility that's there is better than nothing, but it's unfortunately less useful than google (for example) when looking up specific topics and issues (e.g. try and find the OpenVRRP FreeBSD VRRP implementation via the mailing list search -- it's in there: google found it, but the local search engine didn't). -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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