[Sigia-l] "Content Silos"

[Eric Scheid]

"content silos" is a term that crops up every now and then. I already had 
an intuitive sense of the meaning, but hadn't come across any definitive 
discussion as yet. As such, I hadn't formed an opinion on the subject yet.

So, off to google, and I've found a quarter million links containing the 
words "content" and "silos", but just a very short collection with the 
phrase "content silo". None of them go out of their way to clearly define 
what they are, in a glossary sense.

I've gathered the various snippets onto an IAwiki page, and from just 
that it looks like "content silos" is a deprecated form of architecture. 
Lots of reasons why they are bad. Much of the bad-mouthing is coming from 
vendors of complex CMS products, so take that with a grain of salt. 
However, I am heartened to see two IA luminaries cast their opinion.

Read the IAwiki page to see whose ears are burning right now:

     http://IAwiki.net/ContentSilos

What do you think:
  -- are content silos an outdated structure?
  -- does the concept retain validity for some sites/contexts?
  -- do the tools we have today make it super easy to avoid
     the accident of content silos?

Lastly: anyone want to point me to a clear and concise definition to put 
into the IAwiki glossary?

e.

______________________________________________________________________
eric at ironclad.net.au                 i r o n c l a d   n e t w o r k s
information architect                      http://www.ironclad.net.au/