Can Wixonomy Play Well With Others?
sj wonders if wixonomy would work with Wikipedia. I’ve been hoping Shimon Rura would address whether wixonomy can work with other systems. Right now, it sits on top of Feedster. Is it possible to have wixonomy on other sites, integrated with those site search engines? (Zap! I just had a thought of integrating it with this weblog and using it for the categories. Nice.) (But I would like it even more if it used the controls for the categories like what Josh Ain (does he have an ego feed, too?) programmed for Frassle.)
I considered wixonomy’s application as a site index earlier. One of the advantages to pointing to search results over specific pages is that a site index entry may not point to the exact Web page someone wants. By using a search mechanism, someone might be able to browse to exactly what s/he’s looking for. I wonder if there’s a way to separate the term the user sees from what the search engine uses in order to contruct very sophisticated searching on the backside without having the user try to interpret what the special syntax means.
One of the potential pieces of this kind of taxonomy that could be most useful is the ability for different users to create their own structures for certain sites. (Why am I reminding myself about Frassle?) Imagine being able to set up your very own page to help you navigate through some giant site. I’m thinking about how incredibly useful this could be on top of some of the sites I work on, especially that thousand+ page site no one’s probably dug to the bottom of. Nuggets of information on certain topics are strewn throughout the file structure, sometimes in places no one ventures. Sure, there’s a search mechanism, but that only goes so far and is only useful if someone knows which terms to use. Someone familiar with the site, the content, the keywords, could construct some of the basic taxonomic outline to give people a starting point. Others can come in to add terms they use or think are important. If it’s possible for people to create their own pathways, that could be quite helpful because everyone probably uses the site differently–>the casual browsers versus those who routinely use certain sections versus those coming in from a search engine. If the Webmaster can view those individual taxonomies, s/he might get ideas about site improvements.
I like Shimon’s perspective on the project: it’s a way for people to outline what they think is important versus a way to index the content of Feedster. I wonder if he’s working on a “bookmarklet” of sorts so if I do a search in Feedster and I want to “remember” it later, I can “wixonomy it” to create an entry in the taxonomy. All it would really have to do is remember the search terms. I don’t think there’s an automatic way to insert it in the taxonomy’s structure.
If structures like Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project really aren’t as popular as they once were like I’ve heard, will wixonomy catch on?
