The pragma method is pretty simple - for users comfortable with wiki
page building, such as the person that originally created the wiki page.
and who are motivated to promote the J language. However, potential
tag-adders would more typically be J neophytes or casual users, who are
focused on some problem domain, and are just trying to find J code or an
article that addresses their specific issues, or they are just trying to
learn a bit of J. This user typically doesn't know or care about
editing wikis, and isn't particularly enamored with J, but they do know
how to surf the web, and find answers using a search engine.
It will be hard enough to get this kind of user to accept the altruistic
rationale for keyword tagging, and actually tag a few finds. If this
process is not highly intuitive, the user won't take the trouble to come
up with, and place the tags. Having to explain about wiki editing, and
getting them to read Devon's pragma page, is probably beyond most casual
J-surfers tolerance level, particularly for an altruistic process like
tagging. An ultra-simplistic, intuitive user interface for tag-adding,
is critical for a tagging scheme's success.
J-insiders are probably not the best people to be tagging the J-forum
posts and wiki pages, in any case. The person who builds a wiki page is
just the wrong person to be putting keywords into that page. The person
who posts a wiki page or forum post often has a specific domain or
category that he implicitly assumes that the information falls into. The
fact that the information might be valuable in another domain, which
uses different words and phrases to describe the same information, is
often not known to the original author. Good keyword tagging comes from
outsiders who find information, and relate it to another domain that
they are familiar with. This is why the ease-of-use of the tagging
process is so critical.
As far as J-specific keywords go, "J-language" sounds good to me. This
should probably be one of the keywords in every J-wiki page, J-forum
post, J reference document, etc. For that matter "Iverson", "Iverson
Notation", "APL", and a few other ubiquitous tags across the
J-documentation panoply, might be useful also.
To make this keyword tagging intuitive on all forum posts and wiki
pages, with simple "add keyword" and "display/hide keywords" buttons, we
would probably have to modify the underlying code to the wiki and forum
interpreters. I have no idea how difficult this would be, but it is
probably the only way that the process could be made simple enough to
encourage minimally-engaged lurkers to tag a few posts. In the process,
the tagging mechanism could be separated from the "immutable" mechanism,
so the immutable wiki pages could still be tagged, but not changed in
any other way. Generally, keyword tags should not be considered part of
the information in a post. Keyword tags should be treated more like a
pointer or beacon that helps users find the information.
The J reference and tutorial books also present a problem for tagging.
Some form of page, topic, and/or paragraph tagging would be required to
allow the tagging paradigm to extend smoothly to these larger works.
These docs may ahve to be converted to HTML with some type of
pre-processor to provide the tagging controls.
I expect something like this tagging scheme to eventually make it to the
wider web world. Maybe the J world will be an early innovator in this
area, as well as in notational advances.
Skip Cave
<<<>>
Devon McCormick wrote:
Skip - I think the way we mentioned _is_ extremely simple. It consists of
the following steps:
1) at the top of the wiki page, click on "Edit",
2) add keywords to the "#pragma keywords" statement at the very top of the
page,
3) click "Save".
However, you make some good points about how this does not help us with
non-wiki material. Also, this method does not work for an immutable page;
you'd have to create a page pointing to the immutable one and add the
keywords there.
Could we agree on a more searchable phrase for J, like "J-language"?
By the way, I'm by no means a wiki expert unless that encompasses knowing
only about seven things. You can see these seven things on my "Wiki Tips"
page (http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/DevonMcCormick/WikiTips) which exists
partly just to remind myself of the few things I've learned.
In any case, I'm glad to see others interested in this peristent problem of
finding J-language information.
Regards,
Devon
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