Vedabase - Communication about categorization with Srinivasacarya Prabhu
Resending email to Srinivasacarya Prabhu about categorization as you may found it interesting or have some comment for it:
Hare Krishna Dear Srinivasacarya Prabhu,
OK, I thought I would be able to add categories on my own if you enable permissions. It seems you need pre-defined categories that I could then associate a topic to.
Yes. As suggesting paragraph into categorization can be done by any user we need to have good category tree already created. Otherwise users will create duplicate categories or categories which doesn't give sense.
That categorization will be usable for all, possible to use as filter in search. And once proposed categorization of paragraph/s is accepted by moderator it will be applied in all languages. So person who speaks only Telugu will be able to categorize in Telugu, but it will automatically categories same text in English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, even in language we don't have yet (as when we will add new content we connect it)
I have plan to add feature which will enable you to do your personal categorization (personal folders) where you will have full freedom to create any categories you want. Although that would be available only for users who did some service for project (e.g. importing books, categorization, moderators) and donors.
I can discuss with Maharaj and come up with some categories but for now if you need some sample categories below are some that I use in my own indexing:1. Varṇāśrama-dharma
a. Strī-dharma
b. Rāja-dharma
c. Pati-dharma2. Guru-tattva
a. Qualities of a guru
b. Qualities of a disciple3. Philosophical classification
a. Epistemology
b. Ontology
c. Cosmology
d. Praxeology4. Sāṅkhya
5. Aṣṭāṅga
6. Glory of Bhagavatam
7. Glory of Holy name
Most probably I will add now (in close future) only 2. Guru-tattva (a, b), 6. Glory of SB and 7. Glory of Holy name. As those should be clear for 95% users and most likely should be somewhere in final category tree. Although in final category tree they may not be in top/root level, but as children of top level or some other category..
I realize that creating of category tree will be tremendous task. It may need we create some group of devotees who will plan the tree and slowly transform it into 'final' version. And most probably it will be practical to make 2 trees, One for simple devotees and another one for scholars. Some of categories from both three could be considered as aliases. So for example: paragraph in category Varnasrama :: Raja-dharma would be mirrored in something like Leadership :: Quality of the leader.
And I am aware of my inability of correct word expression of my thoughts and ideas, so most times it is hard or impossible for people to understand what I want to say. But I would try my best to clarify or answer if you have any questions.
Brief summary of categorization:
- categorization of texts is accessible for anybody (possible to use for narrowing down search results)
- any user (except those who has very bad reject rate from moderators) can suggest paragraph into any category from category tree
- any suggestions from any language, will be automatically applied in all languages (as we have connected paragraphs through languages)
ASA - This requires that the Catetegory Label be translated into the othe languages. Also a challenge.
- any suggestions will be moderated to assure quality
- users cannot create categories, they can only tag category to the text (there will be way to suggest categories, but will be careful process as we don't want to end with 100,000 categories like other project with categories like 'Eggplant', 'Hitler', 'Therefore', etc.. which are not in fact suppose to be categories, but are more like search terms what user write in search page)
- category tree will have ideally as few top-level items as possible (with common sense children, grand-children, ... e.g. subcategory 'quality of guru' you would search under 'guru-tattva', thus easy for people to find wanted category)
- categories will have ability to have defined synonyms (user could search 'arca vigraha', it will suggest him category 'Deity Worship')
- while suggesting categories user will see also his last few recently used categories (so it is faster to select those categories without need of going down through whole tree)
[I think think topic may be interesting for Guru Maharaja, I may copy this email into blog].
HpS - ASA - Yes, very much interesting to us. We are German. We want everything to fit into a Category. Seems like what you are generating is an Index. Our current index of BBT books is in our Archives as asa-ndx.docx. We have worked on the Index Topics, Categories, for some time and there are some there that might interest you.
I would definitely include Varna-ashrama-dharma (VAD) as one Topic and then the natural Sub-Topics become: Brahman-dharma, Ksatriya-dharma, Vaisya-dharma, Sudra-dharma, Brahmacari-dharma, Grhastha-dharma, Vana-prastha-dharma, Sannyasa-dharma and Stri-dharma.
It is a big area and would require a team, no? BBT books already have indexes for the paper volumes.
Seems you need a Vedabase.io Index Committee.
