Taxonomy

Dividing the world is fun, especially with a group of people. Extra especially with a group of people who have already had a horrible, knock-down, drag-out fight over taxonomy and you're the new guy and someone asks you a taxonomy question in a mass email.

When it comes to taxonomy, I prefer to class stuff by how you use it rather than its genesis. I'm a fan of binary systems in general, but specifically I think using a high-level division is better than having to repeat that divison lower down. I also think that people who are looking for news are more likely to be interested in other news and how-to people like all kinds of how-to.

Other people are type people. They want all their science stuff together and all their politics stuff together. Which is ok, except that when a how-to person is looking for something that doesn't fit well and they have to burrow into 3 or 4 high level catagories. You can have broader catagories if you break up the data higher up.

What I also know is that as you're reading this, you're probably not on the fence about it. If you care at all about how information is organized, you care a lot. A scary lot. If you lose that fight in the workplace, every time you go back to the taxonomy you'll have a little voice in the back of your head that says if only they'd listened to you the company would actually be making money by now. And you're right. They should have listened to you.

You've been waiting a while to hear that. Now, back to work.