[Sigia-l] The A>B, B>A problem

[Leonard Will]

In message <418BF9E8.7070004 at poorbuthappy.com> on Fri, 5 Nov 2004, Peter 
Van Dijck <peter at poorbuthappy.com> wrote
>Thanks Leonard - an answer to my question!
>
>However, the problem I'm describing isn't exactly "what citation order 
>should the facets be put in?". It is more: "What's the name for the 
>problem when there is NO one correct citation order for your facets 
>possible because different users will want to access the information 
>differently."
>
>I'd love to hear more about your view on this. If I understand you 
>correctly, you are saying: you should have some principle to order the 
>facets in a hierarchy. (Note that I am talking about a hierarchy used 
>for browsing. I'm not sure how different usage is in your case?)

Yes, I agree with that. If you are providing a set of indexing strings 
or headings for browsing, made up of a combination of concepts from one 
or more facets, then you have to choose the citation order that you 
consider most useful to the potential users.

>What I am saying is: there often is no solution, because some users 
>will want to access by country first (in this example), others by 
>color. So this is a problem, that can be solved in various ways.

If there is a significant number of users who will find it useful to 
have a different citation order, then you can provide an alternative set 
of indexing strings arranged to suit them.

If you cannot predict the order in which users will wish to have facets 
combined in a browsing list, it is impracticable to provide all possible 
orders. It is usual to choose one, on general principles of "specific 
before general" such as those which I outlined, and explain this to the 
users so that they understand it.

Then provide some alternative means for users to combine facets at the 
time of search in whatever order they wish, such as those which I have 
listed at <http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/thesbibl.htm#interfaces>.

>But what is the name of this problem, if any?

I think that the problem you have described is adequately named as 
"choice of citation order [for an indexing string or subject heading]", 
with or without the words in brackets, depending on whether the context 
makes them unnecessary. You could call it something like "choice of 
alternative citation orders for different user groups" or some variation 
on these expressions.

Whatever name you call it should be self-explanatory, rather than 
something esoteric like "the ABBA problem" which would just irritate me 
if I had to start searching for a definition of what you were talking 
about.

Best wishes

Leonard
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