Now that I’ve switched from my utterly hacked copy of [Blosxom][] to [WordPress][], I’m starting to think again about my goals to have [faceted classification][] as a successor to categories.
[Blosxom]: http://www.blosxom.com/
[WordPress]: http://www.wordpress.org/
[faceted classification]: http://www.google.com/search?q=faceted+classification
In a simple case, each post could have a list of space seperated keywords. In a sidebar of pages would be a list of all distinct keywords being used; selecting one would go to /keywords/keyword/, which would only show entries with that keyword.
Now that’s sounding quite like the existing categories system, isn’t it? But here’s where the fun starts: Facet Intersecions…
Say I’m in /keywords/politics/. Now, some of these entries that come up also have the keyword election in them. In that same sidebar I find a link labeled election and trigger it. Now instead of taking me to /keywords/election/, it takes me to /keywords/politics/election/. That page shows me the entries that have both keywords with them; the intersection between those two keywords. One could have also started at /keywords/election/ and gone to /keywords/election/politics/, and they would be at the same place.
This whole intersection idea in URLs by using relative links, such as ./election/, drill down the entries until you get to the entries that interest you using particular keywords. It reforms hierarchial categories by creating synthetic ones via the intersection queries.
The only real problem I see with this is the need for good URLs, particularly the rule that each place should only have one URL. /keywords/a/b/ = /keywords/b/a/, but they really shouldn’t have their own. My solution? When the keywords intersection is recieved, sort the keywords in the URL alphebetically and do a permanent redirect. The links in the sidebar would take this into account. Thus, if one ever loaded /keywords/b/a/, they’d get a permant redirect to /keywords/a/b/. Simple solution!
There’s all the idea of using property lists, or key-value pairs, for posts. Then, the URLs would look like /facets/category=politics/author=bob/ or whatever. This goes beyond the simple scope of succeding categories.
