Directories, Wikis, and Dave
Dave Winer, of Scripting News is going on about directories again. Now this is one of my favorite topics, too, but I’ve been underwhelmed by Dave’s hierarchical, OPML approach to a solution.
He elaborated more today, but I still think he’s off the mark. However, it struck me that what he described today — “No one owns a category anymore than there is a single place to go for information on a single topic on the Web. We thrive on triangulation, multiple ways to view each subject.” — already exists. It’s called a Wiki. (There are also many Wiki clones.)
A Wiki is kind of a collaboratively-authored, very loose content management system, that is typically used to build a heavily hyperlinked collaborative text, but it also has a categorization feature that effectively turns the WikiWeb into a directory of resources.
This isn’t a ringing endorsement for Wikis. In fact, I think they suffer from at least one of the same problems that I previously suggested Dave’s approach suffers from — categorized directories of information without someone acting in the role of taxonomist and/or editor tend to suck for actually finding information.
Creating effective taxonomies and providing effective filtering is a skill that very few people have (hence the role of an editor/information architect/librarian/etc). Distributing that responsibility creates something different, and arguably something more “open” . . . but very rarely does it create something more effective. I’ll take effective over open.