Comments on: Slate: Calculated Refinement or simple inertia

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Seems like unintentional destructive/disposable IA? Design for destruction http://www.IAwiki.net/DesignForDestruction Disposable IA http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000063.html

By: jjg

jjg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t imagine that any unintentionally disposable thing can be good. Maybe that could be their new tag line: “Slate — unintentionally disposable.”

The architecture, such as it is, seems to be the result of hastily layered-on (and fully disposable) categories. The underlying assumption still seems to be that rearchitecting old content is more trouble than it’s worth.

By: John S. Rhodes

John S. Rhodes — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I read the first paragraph of this article only after opening the PDF and reading the rest of the article. Dumb luck?

By: Eric Scheid

Eric Scheid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There are categories applied to the most recently visible articles, but does that mean that all older articles were categorised … maybe they never were and it’s a big job to go back and re-categorise them?

By: Victor

Victor — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

RE>Finally, I wanted to find out what sites you’d like to see me diagram in the future. You can post your suggestions here.

Jesse, could you please diagram the IAWiki?

Thanks.

By: jjg

jjg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

John: If the link to the PDF had been at the top of the piece, you wouldn’t have needed luck.

Eric: It’s true that the categories seem to have been only recently applied, and adding categories to 5+ years of old content is certainly a big job. Nevertheless, I can’t imagine how temporary categories that are only visible for 7 days from publication offer any significant benefit to the users.

Victor: I’ll get right on that.

By: Eric Scheid

Eric Scheid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

On categories: It depends on what information seeking mode the visitor is in … are they looking for certain specific content, or just *any* content so long as its fresh and interesting. That is, is the site being positioned as a research repository, or as infotainment?

What is the nature/context of the visits to the archive — people looking for past articles they want to revisit/reference, or are people looking to contextually browse through categories?

By: jjg

jjg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Eric asked: That is, is the site being positioned as a research repository, or as infotainment?

Doesn’t it squander the potential of the Web to treat your operation as if you’re cranking out a disposable supermarket tabloid? Or, put another way, why bother keeping archives if they’re nigh impenetrable?

Eric again: What is the nature/context of the visits to the archive — people looking for past articles they want to revisit/reference, or are people looking to contextually browse through categories?

I don’t think this matters; in either case, it comes down to recognition vs. recall. Obviously, if I’m just bouncing around looking for something interesting to read, categories are going to be most useful. But even if I’m looking for a past article, having only the search engine at my disposal forces me to recall some (hopefully unique) snippet of text to plug into the query field. With categories, I can scan until I recognize what I’m looking for.

By: Eric Scheid

Eric Scheid — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

>Doesn’t it squander the potential of the Web to treat your operation as if you’re cranking out a disposable supermarket tabloid?

Sadly, that pretty much describes an inneffable number of blogs

>Or, put another way, why bother keeping archives if they’re nigh impenetrable?

Perhaps they are more concerned with keeping permanent URLs than with building a research library. Ideally, they’d do both, and more … but it’s tough to find the budget for everything.

Please understand I’m not arguing against the idea of well-managed archives, just the applicability within specific contexts.

By: Jesse Hernandez Liwag

Jesse Hernandez Liwag — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mr. Garrett, how about diagramming MapQuest? http://www.mapquest.com/