Sections, sub-sections and tags...
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First of all I think it's great that articles are divided into sections, and can be tagged, so people find what they're looking for faster. Second, I think the system as it's currently implemented is great when sections are clearly defined, and tags are fairly static. But, and I'm just thinking 'out loud' here... In an ever changing landscape of technical solutions I think the current system is a bit limiting. For example there's nothing about functional programming anywhere. Not in the sections and I can't find a tag for it either (unless I'm not looking good enough). I have a post about PHP, but in the sections, under "Languages", there is no PHP to be found. Instead I have to look under "Web Development". That's not very clear, as I can do web development in C#, but that one's under "Languages". Having sections for languages may not be the best approach at all, since there's literally tons of them. There's a ton of sections for Windows languages, frameworks and platforms, but one, maybe two, for Apple. Why should C# and Windows get different treatments than Swift and Apple? It sends a message to programmers of the latter... I realize that people don't write a lot about, let's say Scala or Clojure, on CodeProject, but if they do they're going to have lots of fun getting it in the 'correct' section with the 'correct' tags. And chances are their articles won't be read because they're not in the 'popular sections'. And maybe that's the reason we don't have many such articles? And then there's a load of sections and tags that nobody uses. The current list of sections and tags could be updated, but they'll probably be outdated next week. Isn't it time for a more flexible system for sections and tags? I'm thinking of a system where anyone can just type anything (kind of like WordPress, and probably other CMSs as well.). It should be possible to look for articles based on (multi-word) tags and on sections. And perhaps we could have a fancy tag cloud with the most popular tags of last week, last month and all-time. I believe editors are already editing sections and tags, so misspelled tags or sections can be edited. I'm hoping for a system where a programmer of any platform can publish and have their article read. Of course if I'm the only one interested in such articles and taxonomy I'll shut up now :rolleyes:
Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need.
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First of all I think it's great that articles are divided into sections, and can be tagged, so people find what they're looking for faster. Second, I think the system as it's currently implemented is great when sections are clearly defined, and tags are fairly static. But, and I'm just thinking 'out loud' here... In an ever changing landscape of technical solutions I think the current system is a bit limiting. For example there's nothing about functional programming anywhere. Not in the sections and I can't find a tag for it either (unless I'm not looking good enough). I have a post about PHP, but in the sections, under "Languages", there is no PHP to be found. Instead I have to look under "Web Development". That's not very clear, as I can do web development in C#, but that one's under "Languages". Having sections for languages may not be the best approach at all, since there's literally tons of them. There's a ton of sections for Windows languages, frameworks and platforms, but one, maybe two, for Apple. Why should C# and Windows get different treatments than Swift and Apple? It sends a message to programmers of the latter... I realize that people don't write a lot about, let's say Scala or Clojure, on CodeProject, but if they do they're going to have lots of fun getting it in the 'correct' section with the 'correct' tags. And chances are their articles won't be read because they're not in the 'popular sections'. And maybe that's the reason we don't have many such articles? And then there's a load of sections and tags that nobody uses. The current list of sections and tags could be updated, but they'll probably be outdated next week. Isn't it time for a more flexible system for sections and tags? I'm thinking of a system where anyone can just type anything (kind of like WordPress, and probably other CMSs as well.). It should be possible to look for articles based on (multi-word) tags and on sections. And perhaps we could have a fancy tag cloud with the most popular tags of last week, last month and all-time. I believe editors are already editing sections and tags, so misspelled tags or sections can be edited. I'm hoping for a system where a programmer of any platform can publish and have their article read. Of course if I'm the only one interested in such articles and taxonomy I'll shut up now :rolleyes:
Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need.
Yes, the taxonomy is limited by design, and added new Chapters/Sections/Subsections is done after careful consideration. That being said, Tags that are applied to articles are not limited to the official taxonomy and form what is generally termed as a folksonomy. This can be leverage on the Search Page[^]. You can filter on document types, rating, date ranges, authors, fields to search, ... You can even filter on the Chapter, Section or Subsection of the official taxonomy. For example, searching for php returns 1001 articles at this time. Also, if you find yourself searching for the same thing repeatedly, you can save your query for quick searching. For example, I have a search query saved for Chris' Forum posts, just in case he has promised something that is going to result in extra work for me :) Matthew
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Yes, the taxonomy is limited by design, and added new Chapters/Sections/Subsections is done after careful consideration. That being said, Tags that are applied to articles are not limited to the official taxonomy and form what is generally termed as a folksonomy. This can be leverage on the Search Page[^]. You can filter on document types, rating, date ranges, authors, fields to search, ... You can even filter on the Chapter, Section or Subsection of the official taxonomy. For example, searching for php returns 1001 articles at this time. Also, if you find yourself searching for the same thing repeatedly, you can save your query for quick searching. For example, I have a search query saved for Chris' Forum posts, just in case he has promised something that is going to result in extra work for me :) Matthew
Oh wow, never noticed the saved query, that's awesome :thumbsup: Thanks for the clarification.
Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles at my CodeProject profile.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra
Regards, Sander
