[Sigia-l] A mental model

[PeterV]

Hi all,
I've been working on the mental model for a tool I'd like to write one of 
these days, and since you all are part of the target audience I'd like to 
solicit some feedback. Just read the following section and comment on 
whether it makes sense to you: do the concepts ("metadata maps", "network 
around a map", "publish a map", ...) make sense? Are certain things not 
clear? I'm trying to find out if I should change the concepts (or their 
labels) in any way. The explanation assumes you know what metadata is, a 
pretty safe assumption here I think :) I presented the mental model as an 
explanation of a tool because I want to test if the concepts  and labels 
used for them are clear and easily grasped. If not, I'll change the 
concepts until I get something that works.
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Metadata Manager.
The Metadata Manager lets you create and manage metadata maps (we just call 
them maps) for your website. These maps can then power a website: they can 
create automatic navigation like "More about this topic" or "Related 
articles on other websites". To show navigation like that on your website, 
just include a file that is generated by the Metadata Manager.

You create maps by building hierarchies of topics and assigning topics to 
pages. There's more to it than that but those are the basics: topics in 
hierarchies are assigned to pages.

You can publish your map on your website so other people can look at it, 
much like you can publish RSS files for example.

The real power of MetadataManager lies in this: you can create a network of 
other maps around your map by creating links between individual topics on 
your map and topics on published maps of other people. The network around 
the map means that when other people add metadata to their maps, your map 
can automatically be updated with this new content. Creating a network 
around your map is very powerful: it lets you leverage the work of 
assigning metadata other authors have done. Assigning metadata can be a 
drag, that's why this is important.

When creating a map, you can import bits of maps you or other people made 
(because they are published), so you don't have to reinvent the 
metadatawheel everytime. Easy. Then you can adjust those bits to your own 
taste.
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Thanks,
PeterV