Can Waymark Categories Appear Under Mult. Headings

[+Granite of StoneSoup]

Jeremy asked me to post this question in this group, so here goes.

 

The question to be answered is whether a Waymark category can exist under more than one heading?

Here is the situation that led to this question.

 

One of our members has created a great website of Disney survey benchmarks. I downloaded them when I went to Walt Disney World and had fun seeing them as I walked around the park to the various attractions. Many others have also had similar experiences.

 

I have been thinking about proposing a group for Amusement Parks. I have the coordinates of a number of the major parks and there are also a number of virtual caches in geocaching.com that are focused around fun sites in and around amusement parks. I have spoken with a number of people that really enjoy downloading all the "virtual" caches for an amusement park and then bringing their GPS to find new, fun bits of location trivia.

 

I would think that a person visiting Walt Disney World will very likely want to download all of the Waymarks within the park - including benchmarks. However, a person collecting benchmarks will probably think to look first under the Benchmarks category. Both will likely want to find the same information.

 

Example:

Places >> Amusement Parks >> Walt Disney World >> WDW Benchmarks

Things >> Benchmarks >> WDW Benchmarks

 

I think that it would be ideal to have Waymark categories appear in multiple places at Waymarking.com without having to duplicate the information and logs. Can this be done?

[Jeremy]

The location itself will help to locate other related people, places and things since you can do nearby searches, however we will be adding a "see also" feature where a waymark category like roller coasters could link over to fun houses, and vice-versa.

 

The same general functionality will go with relating one waymark that relates to another waymark. So if a waymark is pointing to the same location it will have a stacking function to include the information from both sources.

 

Any other ideas are welcome to make sure that related items are well linked within the site. We've been toying with the idea of creating bookmark lists for categories, for example.

[+tozainamboku]

I've been thinking of this very problem. People will want to search for waymarks in ways other than category and location. I like the idea of meta-categories. A meta-category would be like any other category but it would not have any waymarks of its own. Once a waymark is created in one of the regular categories, it could be submitted to be added to one or more meta-categories. The meta-category manager (or group) would review the waymark to determine if it meets the requirements for the meta-category and either accept or reject the waymark in the meta-category. I'm not sure if only the waymark's owner could submit the waymark for a meta-category or if anyone could submit a waymark. Perhaps this is left up to the meta-category manager.

 

Some ideas for meta-categories:

• Hiking destinations - waymarks that require a hike of at least 1 mile to get to
  
• Waymarks along a route
  
• Dog friendly waymarks - waymarks where you can take your dog
  
• Disney World waymarks - see OP.
  

And of course there is the every popular Wow!!! waymarks meta-category - waymarks that are really unique and that the general waymarker would find interesting.

[Wintertime]

The location itself will help to locate other related people, places and things since you can do nearby searches, however we will be adding a "see also" feature where a waymark category like roller coasters could link over to fun houses, and vice-versa.

 

That sounds like a good solution, Jeremy. So for now, the Disney benchmarks category will go under "Benchmarks," but later, it could be linked to other categories that involve amusement parks?

 

Patty

[Jeremy]

Yep! That's the general idea.

 

Metacategories sounds like the bookmark list idea but it has a better ring to it.

[ju66l3r]

Many ontologies are not arborescences (meaning there is a single path from root to every vertex in the tree).

 

As long as the ontology here remains a directed, acyclic graph, I think it will work fine.

 

(N.B. - Directed means only one direction for each edge...aka "X is a Y" in our context. Acyclic means no category can somehow lead back to the same category...aka "Person is a Human is a Person")

 

If I go to a specific category's page, then having a list at the top of all the possible paths through the tree to that vertex is easy to determine and the kind of information that people will be looking for.

 

Example:

 

---------------

Home>>Places>>Theme Parks>>Disney World

Home>>Places>>Theme Parks>>Disney Land

Home>>Things>>Benchmarks

 

Category: Disney Benchmarks

Owner: Wintertime

---------------

 

Of course, in the specific example of Disney Benchmarks, it may be more accurate to use the suggested "See Also:" feature, since Disney Benchmarks are not actually an example of a Disney World, but instead located within a Disney World.

 

So, a modified example would be:

 

---------------

Home>>Places>>Graven Mouse Images

Home>>Things>>Benchmarks

 

See Also:

Home>>Places>>Theme Parks>>Disney World

Home>>Places>>Theme Parks>>Disney Land

 

Category: Disney Benchmarks

Owner: Wintertime

----------------

[ju66l3r]

Meta-categories would work within this framework by putting them at the top of the page as another path:

 

-----------

Home>>Places>>Buildings>>

Home>>Validation Required>>

 

Category: Landlocked Lighthouses

Owner: The Leprechauns

-----------

 

Just make the "meta-category" a top-level domain right under "Home" and it'll be a direct path to any number of categories that fit it, as well as their original path through the graph/tree.

[Jeremy]

"See also" can define both an "is" and a "related" category, can't it?

 

Disney Benchmarks

 

See also:

Amusement Parks

 

(There are only so many Disney Lands, so Amusement Parks seems more fitting here)

 

Waymarks that relate to each other would fit the "is" while identical or related waymark categories would fit under "see also." It's hard to kick holes in that I think.

 

Metacategories are Bookmark Lists in function but relate to categories and not waymarks. So "Disney Owned" could be a meta category that would point to all Disney related categories.'

 

And of course the stand-by folksonomies are already in operation on the site but need to be expanded to waymarks.

 

IMO there should be group "see also" and user contributed "see also" categories. That way someone could decide whether to use the Cathedral Method of management or the Bazaar method of category/waymark management.

[Wintertime]

Home>>Places>>Graven Mouse Images

 

I love it!

 

Patty