Intriguing, useful article – thanks much, Rachel… but I agree with others that it would have been richer, more nutritious with a broader perspective, key sources cited, credit given (dare I say more “context” provided?) – e.g. mention of and differentiation from data modeling, maybe via an editor’s intro (dare I say “content curation”?). Here are Rosenfeld and Morville a decade ago in Polar Bear (2nd edition), p. 293:
“If you’re already familiar with data modeling, then content modeling should seem similar. However, keep in mind that the unstructured text that makes up so much of our web content presents many challenges that don’t come up in data modeling. In effect, content modeling is an effort to apply structure where there is little or none, with the goal of supporting improved searching, browsing, and managing of content. In a sense, content models are perhaps the truest form of bottom-up information architecture: by determining what types of chunks are important and how to link them, we make the answers embedded in our content ‘rise to the surface’.”
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Back to the Articlejohnrhowe
Intriguing, useful article – thanks much, Rachel… but I agree with others that it would have been richer, more nutritious with a broader perspective, key sources cited, credit given (dare I say more “context” provided?) – e.g. mention of and differentiation from data modeling, maybe via an editor’s intro (dare I say “content curation”?). Here are Rosenfeld and Morville a decade ago in Polar Bear (2nd edition), p. 293:
“If you’re already familiar with data modeling, then content modeling should seem similar. However, keep in mind that the unstructured text that makes up so much of our web content presents many challenges that don’t come up in data modeling. In effect, content modeling is an effort to apply structure where there is little or none, with the goal of supporting improved searching, browsing, and managing of content. In a sense, content models are perhaps the truest form of bottom-up information architecture: by determining what types of chunks are important and how to link them, we make the answers embedded in our content ‘rise to the surface’.”