Re: Create hierarchies from list of keywords -- well known algorithm?

Not all keyword assignments would constitute a hierarchy. For example take just three elements with two keywords (let say 'a' and 'b'). One element with both keywords and two others with a different one of them. Using your algorithm you would get "a/1, a/b/2, /b/3", this is not hierarchy because you can find b directly under root and under 'a'.

Keywords assignements constitute only a partial order, to get a tree you need the additional property of well orderedness - see Tree Set Theoretic.

By the way I belive tags are a fad. What is really needed is full text search for bookmarks (or better for whole browser history). More arguments on my wiki: Tags Or Searchable Cache. I am thinking about writing a web site engine for that, this should not be very complicated.

Comment on Re: Create hierarchies from list of keywords -- well known algorithm?

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Re^2: Create hierarchies from list of keywords -- well known algorithm? by revdiablo (Prior) on Feb 24, 2005 at 17:56 UTC
Not all keyword assignments would constitute a hierarchy. Yes, I actually noticed that after posting the Meditation. I ended up with some bookmarks arranged similarly to: Perl Web Programming Foo Bar Web Programming Baz Qux I'm not sure what you would call this. After reading the links in your post, I'd be inclined to say it's a hierarchy, but not a well-ordered one. Or maybe a hierarchy is by definition well-ordered, and this is just a crude imitation of one? In any case, it isn't ideal. Perhaps this problem could be solved by counting the frequency of groups rather than just individual tags/keywords? By the way I belive tags are a fad. What is really needed is full text search for bookmarks (or better for whole browser history). Perhaps for bookmarks, full text search would be a good way to find a specific bookmark a year after you added it. But that doesn't convince me that keywords or tags are a "fad" that will prove useless. They are a nice way of classifying things, and sometimes classification is actually necessary. Consider an archive of photos. You can't really search the "full body" of a photo, so some sort of classification is required.	[reply]
Re^3: Create hierarchies from list of keywords -- well known algorithm? by zby (Vicar) on Feb 24, 2005 at 18:18 UTC
Try to solve my example first. You would need redefine what the directories comprise. It is clear that b cannot contain a and vice versa, but needs to contain a part of a. You can fix it by adding intersections and unions but I don't think this would lead to anything practical. And alternative would be to use faceted navigation instead of directories. Your example with photos is a good one. But I still think that search would be much more usefull than tags for text.	[reply]