[Sigia-l] Metadata::Information type

[Listera]

"Jason Burton" wrote:

> This is my first post, so apologies if its not in keeping with the list (to
> get my excuses in early - I did check the archive before posting).

You are frighteningly on topic, but you'll get used to it. :-)
  
> Our theory is that user's searching on the same keywords but for different
> treatments of a subject can make an informed judgement based on samples of
> results from each information type. So User 1 can see that the news archive
> and journal articles are her best bet and drill down into those information
> types, whilst User 2 can spot the How-to-guides because only the top 3 of
> the other two (more numerous) types are displayed.

That theory assumes that (your metadata) Type determines relevancy. That
cannot really be true in practice, I'm sure some Types will contain
irrelevant content and, in turn, some relevant content may never be exposed
to the user because, for one reason or another, they happen to fall under
the wrong Type. If you start to tag content with too many Types you'll reach
the point of diminishing returns soon.
 
> Assuming that we choose the right information types, can anyone see any
> major flaws in this idea? For example, our solution will mean that results
> will never be purely ranked by relevancy of search terms, but we're guessing
> that will not be a major issue.

Well, self-admittedly you are making a number of assumptions/guesses here.
That's the nature of "Best Bets." You are betting. If you are right, you'll
be OK. If not, the results can be characterized from mildly biased to
outright (mis)guided. Since this borders on religion, I won't debate the
pros/cons, other than the critical issue I outlined above. (I'm not a fan of
topics or Best Bets, if you can't tell.:-)

Your problem is not atypical. Google attempts to solve it by the "Similar
pages" concept:

Title
    Short description
          Similar content

I'm not sure what you use for categorization/delivery, but have you
considered this approach? If so, what were the problems?

Ziya
Nullius in Verba