Theory: The Appeal of the New
Jorn Barger
alphabetical lists, where you have no particular reason to prefer any of
the choices, so you end up choosing none of them.
Lists of online periodicals are especially guilty here (who wants to
read the 'Ahnberg Abacus'?), but I've got a splendid solution for that
case:
The shared online _calendar_ at eGroups:
<URL:http://www.egroups.com/cal?listname=weblogs>
lets me arrange the periodicals according to their publishing schedule,
so the top item in this 'list' is always the publication that's most
recently been updated.
While this is not a big deal for most surfers, it adds just enough human
interest, I think, to defeat 'aardvark catatonia'...
--
XML for webpages is like plastic bags for comic books.
I edit the Net: <URL:http://www.robotwisdom.com/>
"I finally admit the obvious. The only site you need."
--LaddieO, URL Labs
Jorn Barger
> my understanding is that librarians have spent many decades developing
> and refining classification schemes whose purpose is to map a varied
> collection to one dimension (shelving sequence). the most widely known
> systems are the Library of Congress classification system and the Dewey
> decimal system. had you thought of using these ?
These are just general news/culture zines-- the only other way to sort
them is by place.
Cameron Hayne
Barger <jo...@mcs.com> wrote:
> These are just general news/culture zines-- the only other way to sort
> them is by place.
No - you could also sort them by number of pages, by popularity (# of
readers), by the frequency of swear words, by percentage of graphical
content, ...