5:06 PM
@DanielBeck: Heh, interesting part of the paper:
> Papers written over two decades suggested three such directions for alternative solutions: (a) Multiple Classification allowing users to assign the information item to more than one category (e.g. tagging) (Lansdale, 1988; Malone, 1983);
> (b) Automatic Classification, which spares the user from having to manually classify the information (e.g., applying a predominant default classification parameter such as time) (Malone, 1983); and (c) Search, using any attribute that the user happens to remember about it, thus avoiding classification altogether (Lansdale, 1988).
I don't feel like tagging would work (equivalent to providing all metadata), one would simply would miss out on things.
The second one is the first one automated, for music that works well but I don't see that directly working for everything.
And searching depends on the two others again, as well as a proper structure OR proper file names OR proper metadata.
So, the problem is actually not only to structure your data (using the advice from the paper) but as well to give it proper file names and proper meta data.
And then automating classification and searching it would make more sense, which I also have to find the best way for...
@HackToHell's belvedere is one option, dunno why it's CPU though so might (or might not) look into that.
> However, to date, there is no evidence that any of them is better than the existing hierarchical method. Our current results suggest that navigation is effective for active documents, providing an explanation for why users have not embraced search.
Hmm, that's what was said < 2 years ago. Quite interesting...
Which also supports the idea that "searching requires proper organization to give proper results".
Which is actually something Google is actively doing these days, "semantically mapping their data" to give better search results.
(FYI, I did a team presentation on that)
> Navigation in the physical environment has been the traditional way of finding items throughout millions of years of evolution (e.g., hunter-gatherers looking for food where they had previously stored it, or a dog digging for a bone where it hid it). As humans, we have well developed cognitive and neurological structures that support navigation in physical locations and these may be used for computer folder navigation as well.
> Retrieval Time = 4.956 + 2.236 * Depth + 0.106 * Size
Science $!@ç#, it works...
According to that formula, a user should have at most 21 items per target folder and should create a new level of navigation folders when he has more than that per target folder.
So, to summarize the optimal values: ~3 levels deep, ~10 subfolders per folder and ~21 items per target folder.
Anything lower than that and you spent more time searching on your screen, anything higher than that and you spent more time clicking through the results.
Also translatable to web sites: Every page should be accessible within three clicks, 20 items per page. Dunno what to translate the sub-folders to though, perhaps 10 things per menu (Super User seems to prefer 5 though, but I think < 10 isn't necessarily bad as it could just indicate not enough data as well)...
FYI, that is a Belgian police car and an ambulance as well as a more secure car too afterwards.
I'm sure there are lots of ways to do it, I'm seeking inspiration as I think it's time to re-organize my home directory structure.
My current structure
Here is my current structure:
~/dl-web
~/bittorrent
~/Desktop
~/PDF
~/work
~/school
~/free-time
~/photos
~/ <<the rest>>
dl-web...
