[Wikipedia-l] Categories considered harmful

Sun Jun 20 05:52:20 UTC 2004

Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  
>
>>Library science has indeed invented numerous schemes.  Any such scheme
>>designed for general application is as good as its competitors.  Each
>>developped independently to address the priorities of the originating
>>library.  Any of them may thus be validly criticized for its nationalist
>>tendencies.
>>    
>>
>I think you are wrong here, but I wish I was more certain of my case.
>I'm not a librarian.  I'm just fond of observing this German-American
>cultural clash from some distance (from Sweden).
>
I readily admit that I am not up to date on modern trends in German 
library science :-)

>In the field of digital libraries, there is a subculture that likes to
>discuss "thesauri and ontologies", especially bordering on the
>"semantic web" subculture.  It seems to me that most people in the
>thesauri and ontologies subculture are from Germany and have some kind
>of German library science background.  I'm talking about stuff like
>http://www.ecdl2003.org/ecdl.tutorials.html#tutorial4
>and http://www.jcdl2004.org/tutorials.htm#t2a
>
I checked those links and am not any further ahead.  I think that I can 
understand how thesauri might be relevant; however, I'm puzzled by how 
they have imported a term from metaphysics to serve their purpose.

>U.S. libraries have the Dewey Decimal system for classification and
>other countries have other systems.  These systems are colored by the
>time and country where they were created.  So far you are right.  But
>it seems to me that perhaps German library science scholars have gone
>deeper into making more of a science of this part of library science.
>Instead of learning, using and teaching the system they have, German
>library scientists discuss how best to design such category systems.
>I've heard them dismiss Yahoo's and Dmoz' category trees as naive
>creations of people who don't know the basics of library science.
>
Their criticisms of Yahoo and Dmoz are quite likely valid.  Hard core 
scientists will dispute that there can be any science in Library 
science.  Still we need a technology more than we need a science.  Will 
the efforts of the German scientists lead to a user friendly system.  
Users too easily reject any kind of coded system.

>I think this is what is happening on wikide-l and I'm glad that we
>have library scientists there.
>
>Problematisieren -- the German word for making a problem out of
>something, to see problems (worthy of a deeper discussion) where
>others don't -- is the first step of a scientific approach.
>
How scientific does our approach need to be?

>I only speak Swedish, English and German, and this reduces my
>perspectives.  Perhaps Chinese, Russian or French library scientists
>have totally different approaches that I should take into account.
>
And how has this issue been developping in Swedish?  As I said before, 
each wiki is likely to find its own solution to the problem.  
Compatibility may need to came at a later stage.

Ec