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Posted by Hugh
Aug 20, 2012 at 02:20 PM
Well, clearly not so provocative. ;)
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 20, 2012 at 05:35 PM
Hugh wrote:
>Well, clearly not so provocative. ;)
Actually, it wasn’t that provocative, but only because I agree with everything you’ve written.
The tardiness of my response to yours and other comments has more to do with the fact that they are all provocative and I’ve wanted to think things through before responding.
Besides, smoke was beginning to emerge from my ears as my brain was grinding away. Had to let it cool down!
SZ
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 21, 2012 at 10:57 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>I feel that the proactive vs. passive
>role of the user in organising the information is an important one to make, (a) because
>with Google and desktop search engines very little such proactive work is done
>nowadays and (b) it is by doing such work, e.g. in academia, that one recognises
>patterns, develops theories, perceives solutions, etc.
In support of my above proposed approach, the following older thread might be of interest http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/63/
(Found it while looking for posts on hierarchical tags)
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 21, 2012 at 11:05 PM
Hugh wrote:
>The x-axis is likely to be complicated by the understandable desire of developers
>to create applications that identify, organise and access information as much as
>possible every-which-way - topical placement, tags, linking, wikis, hierarchical
>folders, “artificial intelligence”, maps, diagrams, concordance-based search,
>to name the few I can immediately think of - and therefore will probably be more
>arbitrary. The complexities involved in adding and understanding an extra
>dimension could outweigh the advantages.
Regardless of the terms used (e.g. keywords, tags, categories…) and the way to present the information—which is a completely different issue- I do not think I have seen a way to provide access to information which doesn’t fit under one of the following:
- Topical organisation
- Relationships
- No organisation at all (rely on search)
I’d be very interested in seeing my above claim refuted.
Regarding the taxonomy, to keep things simple I would suggest Search (automatic) - Organisation (proactive) for the X-axis.
Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 3, 2012 at 01:12 PM
This discussion is happening on so many threads that I don’t know which one to reply to :)
I feel that some of the disagreements here stem from the fact that we use “writing” as a monolithic activity, when in fact “writing” can mean something very different for different people, and therefore different types of tools would be more suitable.
E.g. “writing” as in writing up the results of a large research study where the process of writing is still a process of discovery might be very different than writing up something with which one is fairly familiar, such as one’s diary entry or the manual for a software or some other business writing. I’m sure fiction writers engage in yet another type of writing. So “outlining” would mean something different in each case, therefore we should be careful about making definite statements about which outlining software is the best one for “writing.”