> [Out of curiosity, Tim, are you irked when wikipedia insists on "redirecting [you] from" what you REALLY want to call the topic, because wikipedia's world is smaller than yours and damn wikipedia for making you use it's mental model!]
Two points:
1. In my mind, "Did you mean?" is linked with errors. Anyway, I almost
only see the phrase when I misspell something. It suggests YOU did
something wrong. "Redirected from" suggests the system is adapting to
you. And insofar as I know I could *change* the system, my irritation
is even less.
2. Wikipedia probably needs to have a single, unique name for each
article. Search systems don't need that. Google certainly doesn't. It
doesn't care whether you call it Nat Turner's Rebellion or the
Southhampton Insurrection. There's no reason library catalogs need to
either. The explanation lies in the intellectual constraints of
physical catalog cards being senselessly carried forward to a
unconstrained, digital reality.
T
Received on Mon May 04 2009 - 22:45:00 EDT