Re: The Dewey Dilemma

> They mention LibraryThing's "OSC" which, up until now, is delivering
> somewhat below expectations:
>  http://www.librarything.com/groups/buildtheopenshelvesc

Well, I don't know about "below expectations." Mine were low to start :)

For the interested, here's how it broke down.

First and most importantly, it's very, very hard for a mixed group of
people to agree on something like this. Group work is hard enough, but
a collaboratively-build classification requires agreement and
collaboration far above the usual wiki entry. I knew it would be hard
from the start.

In LT's case, the problem was that a core of us, and the people I
asked to lead it, agreed on a high number of top-level categories. We
felt that "container categories"--categories that really only existed
to hold a number of other ones, and which weren't concepts people
really glommed onto—should be kept to a minimum. The model here was
bookstores, which are okay with putting "games" and "sports" somewhere
near each other, without having a "recreation" category you need to
navigate first. A lot of "systemmatizers" didn't like this—they kept
fighting for a small number of top level categories a la Dewey, and
wanted to find low-level slots for what are, in bookstores, top-level
concerns (ie., putting the "pets" section way down the chain in some
science > biology section). So there was disagreement from the start.
We'd have probably been better off making it clear the fundamental
method was set in stone and, if you didn't agree, you could go
elsewhere.

Compounding problems were a clash between academic and non-academic
models of communication and authority. Some of the people doing most
of the leading and working talked less than the others, not having the
time and not, I think, buying into my belief that conversation—even
repetitive, hand-holding conversation—is the glue that holds the
internet together. This imbalance left people feeling ignored.

Anyway, we hope to try it again sometime. But we'll know it's hard.

Tim