Content of final catalogue

[davewitley]

I haven't been around much recently, as you've probably gathered.

I'm confused by this, now.

> Carolyn:

> As mentioned before, I think we do need to have them sorted to 
some 
> extent, for two reasons:

> - some reject categories may interest people for further searching 
> and review - movies, fanfic and perhaps OT are the most obvious
> - some reject categories - FAQ/adds nothing new will be used for 
> other purposes subsequently

This implies that people *will* be able to access the 'rejected' 
posts in the database.

> Carolyn:
> 
> Well, if the final decision is to put categories such 
> as 'Movie', 'OT', 'Fanfic' up as part of the catalogue, I imagine 
it 
> would be possible to have a universal search routine which enabled 
> you to sort them by author perhaps - this would be a useful search 
> option across the whole catalogue, I agree. However, if you wanted 
> any further refinement than this, eg any kind of subject 
> categorisation within a category like 'Movie', there would be no 
> alternative but to go in there and code up the movie posts. We've 
> made a decision not to do this right now, but someone who is 
> interested could maybe do this at some later date if they wanted 
to.

I don't see the need for additional coding.  People would just have 
to understand that if, say, they wanted to read movie-related posts 
about Ron, the 'Ron' categories would be of no help.  But they could 
(I believe) still search on the text string 'Ron' if we gave them 
text-searching facilities.  All I'm suggesting is making best use of 
the work that is being done.

> David, previously:
> I confess part of my thinking here is that, given we have a 
database 
> of the entire list here, why not use it? It would be great to be 
able 
> to call up all posts that, say, include the text
> string 'Hermione' and are categorised as 'Snape'. This would give a
> different (but overlapping) set to those categorised as 'Hermione'
> and including the string 'Snape'. What about all posts
> categorised 'Snape' but *not* including the text string 'vampire'?
> Or all such posts whose author was Pippin, posted between GOF
> release and OOP release. Really, I think you are sitting on
> something of a goldmine here, and to focus only on the categories 
is 
> to miss out.
> 
> Carolyn:
> This is exactly what I am proposing - see the MEG document. The 
only 
> difference is that, right now, I am not proposing to include any 
of 
> the posts we are currently deciding are rejects for whatever 
reason.

This is the crux - will those posts be accessible or not?  As I 
understand it, we have three options:

- delete them from the database;
- keep them for specialists to use, but deny the general HPFGU 
member access;
- keep them, and let people access them on the same basis as the 
other posts.

None of these options involves significant effort to implement, so 
far as I can see - what may be more work is providing the sort of 
facilities to do Boolean searches on things like author etc, in a 
form that is not too forbidding to the average list member, but as I 
understand you above we are intending to try this anyway.

> Carolyn:
> Certainly this catalogue would defeat any such plan from Yahoo - 
it 
> will provide a much better search mechanism than anything they are 
> prepared to provide.
> 
> However, you have not persuaded me of the value of including every 
> post in the catalogue at this stage.

Nor was I trying to (depending on what exactly this means).

> My pragmatic perspective is that even with 13 people having access 
to 
> the database at present, progress is still extremely slow. If we 
> start trying to code up the 70% of posts that are currently being 
> rejected, we will frankly never finish the project. Any 
refinements 
> are possible down the line, but right now I'd like to try and 
reach 
> Base Camp 1, which I have suggested is getting up to post 50 000, 
and 
> getting some kind of prototype search routine working on that body 
of 
> posts.

I repeat, I'm *not* suggesting additional coding in any form.  but 
we are, in fact, coding all posts.

As I understand it, whether the reject posts are 'included' 
or 'excluded' from the catalogue is a cosmetic matter of semantics.  
De facto, they are in the database.  Yes, they get only very basic 
categorisation, but that's still a whole lot better than the 
situation out there on the list itself.

David