Category Structure.

cstdenis · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 9:48 pm Post subject:

Now that the content policy thread has died down, and I'm mostly done making formal policy based on it I have a new question.

How should the category system be made?

The current system has problems. I am willing to hear any suggestions on how hirarchy should be re-organized.

One feature I plan to add that will help is an alias system, allowing more than one name for somthing to point to the same actual content. For example "Evangelion", "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Shin Seiki Evangelion" could all point to the same set of pictures and sub categories. I think this will help the current problems alot.

The only limits on the structure is the root category can only have about 20 enteries and it must also take fanfiction into consideration.
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fallenangel · Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:59 pm Post subject:

Even with its problems, DA's system seems to work rather well. I would almost suggest a multi-part system, but it would require more coding for probably not that much benefit.

General categories, very big (ie anime, fantasy, males, females, real people, whatever you want) I'd also suggest having a misc category either as a general category or one in each instead of allowing people to make new ones. I notice several that were created because of the person not taking the time to find an already existing one, or they created a useless category (______'s drawings!!!! ^_^)

Under each large category, break down the subs for it. I don't know how anime would best be broken down, by series or categories or however you people sort it out. One thing that helps with category clutter elsewhere is to make it easy for images to fit under multiple categories. They tend to be pretty evenly spread that way (ie, an anime drawing of a girl and a dragon could go under anime, females, or fantasy, depending on what the artist thought it was best). I suppose most anime fans would immediately put their work under anime, though, so maybe just have a whole set of subs under that, as well.

I like the real people section (big surprise, eh?) as it is...for the most part. I'm not sure if I like the extreme sub categories or not (even though I made half of them *cough* for the subjects I had 3+ pictures of). I suppose there are enough pictures, though, that it's pretty helpful to be able to see pictures of exactly what one's looking for without guessing based on the titles. So you can leave that as it is, unless you'd rather change it to a more "male" "female" "freehand" type system.

The BIG problem I have with the submission page as it is when it comes to categories is the extreme length of the list. That's why I like multiple part submissions. First pick a general category, then the sub categories of just that section come up for you to choose from. The list as it is is very difficult to find what you're looking for if you aren't sure what goes where.

I think that's all I have to say about that. Get rid of the useless categories and sort the rest however you like.
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cstdenis · Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:06 pm Post subject:

I will note that as it is, the search engine can be used to find categories.

Knowing that may be helpful to some people. (I really need to document the site better)
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Badspot · Newb Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 10

Here are some problems I've noticed.
-Under anime "FLCL" and "fooly cooly" are the same thing, so they should be combined.
-The sailor moon category has way to many entries and it is in desperate need of subcategories for each character (I made one in the hopes of starting a trend)
-Under anime->inuyasha there is a category "POKEMON" and " Your charecter". That crap should be deleted

Really what's needed for most anime is a category for each character and then a category for groups and one for miscelaneous. And you should be required to put your image into one of the subcategories, not just dump it in the root.

On a side note, I think any image who's title starts with an exclamation point or asterisk or tilde or plus sign or any other crap character just to get it to the front of the alphabet should be deleted. Thats just lame.

fallenangel · Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2003 6:45 pm Post subject:

I was wondering while browsing the musician category (let alone applying this to something like the anime section) if it would be possible to get the categories set and then have some people or you or whoever go through and move them all into the proper subs. There seem to be a lot of images in the general category that there are already subs for and even more that could have their own sub-categories now that there are multiple images of them.
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cstdenis · Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2004 1:27 pm Post subject:

That will happen eventually.

I'll probebly give mods the power to move around pics if they care enough to go to the effort of doing it.
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