admin/help/taxonomy doesn't include information about free-tagging amongst other things, so could do with a refresh.
Ideally I think the explanation of what a taxonomy is and isn't should be moved to the handbook page, and it should simply deal with:
Category
Term
Hieararchy
Free-tagging
Required
etc.
ideally quite short sentences for each one which then link to the handbook as well.
This is the current text for easy reference. May have a go at this later but just opening the issue up for now:
The taxonomy module is one of the most popular features because users often want to create categories to organize content by type. A simple example would be organizing a list of music reviews by musical genre.
Taxonomy is the study of classification. The taxonomy module allows you to define vocabularies (sets of categories) which are used to classify content. The module supports hierarchical classification and association between terms, allowing for truly flexible information retrieval and classification. The taxonomy module allows multiple lists of categories for classification (controlled vocabularies) and offers the possibility of creating thesauri (controlled vocabularies that indicate the relationship of terms) and taxonomies (controlled vocabularies where relationships are indicated hierarchically). To view and manage the terms of each vocabulary, click on the associated list terms link. To delete a vocabulary and all its terms, choose edit vocabulary.
A controlled vocabulary is a set of terms to use for describing content (known as descriptors in indexing lingo). Drupal allows you to describe each piece of content (blog, story, etc.) using one or many of these terms. For simple implementations, you might create a set of categories without subcategories, similar to Slashdot's sections. For more complex implementations, you might create a hierarchical list of categories.
For more information please read the configuration and customization handbook Taxonomy page.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #12 | categorise_to_categorize.patch | 3.88 KB | keith.smith |
| #6 | taxonomy_help.patch | 9.73 KB | catch |
| #4 | taxonomy_help.patch | 4.82 KB | catch |
Comments
Comment #1
robertdouglass commentedGreat initiative! Here's a wiki page to let people try out different texts. When we're agreeable on the text we can roll the patch.
http://groups.drupal.org/node/7132
Comment #2
robertdouglass commentedAs per the patch that I submitted rewording the Hierarchies nomenclature, it would be nice if this help page text would describe the difference between vocabularies with lists, single parents and multiple parents:
http://drupal.org/node/192242
Comment #3
bonobo commentedA cross-post from here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/7132#comment-20772
It does not address the terminology about hierarchies in the other issue, but, in many cases, the people who are confused are the ones who don't need to know/understand complex taxonomy structures -- at a certain point, they need to know that they don't really need to understand multiple parents/distant parents, and that they can have a flat or a single hierarchy and be done with it -- toward that end, I suggest this as text --
-----------------------------
The taxonomy module allows you to create taxonomies that define or describe content.
At the most simple, a taxonomy can be used to create a free-tag vocabulary, or lists of descriptive terms created by users as they post content. These free-tag vocabularies are most commonly used in blogs and social bookmarking applications.
Taxonomy can also be used to create a controlled vocabulary. A controlled vocabulary consists of a list of terms entered by a site administrator. Controlled vocabularies can be used to create a site structure, or to prevent user error. An example use of a controlled vocabulary would be on a recipe site: A recipe could be defined by two taxonomies: Type of Meal and Preparation Time.
Type of Meal could contain the following terms: Appetizer, Main Course, Salad, Dessert
Preparation Time could contain the following terms: less than 1 hour; 1-2 hrs; 2-3 hrs; 3 plus
At its most complex, Drupal's taxonomy can support complex hierarchies with different relationships between terms. These complex structures are generally not required for most sites, but this functionality helps distinguish Drupal from other content management systems as it creates the potential for complex metadata structures around content within a Drupal site.
For more information on taxonomy, see the handbook page. To extend the core taxonomy functionality, see the Taxonomy section of the Modules download page.
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Comment #4
catchOk here's a patch combining elements of my own first attempt at this and bonobo's. A final version of this won't be possible until http://drupal.org/node/192209 and http://drupal.org/node/192242 have been resolved, but I think it's already a significant improvement over what's there at the moment.
Also please see http://drupal.org/node/192242#comment-630424 for graphics by BrightLoudNoise proposed for this page - we'll need to decide exactly what we're calling the hierarchy options in that issue first before they can be included.
Comment #5
catchThis is dependent on a few issues now:
http://drupal.org/node/192242
http://drupal.org/node/192209
http://drupal.org/node/193333
So marking as needs work on the assumption some or all of them get committed.
Comment #6
catchOK this is a full rewrite of admin/taxonomy/help + many of the form descriptions etc. on the taxonomy admin pages. I've tried to incorporate as many of the suggestions on this thread and others as possible.
Comment #7
catchedit: this also catches one incidence of "categories" which wasn't caught in the taxonomy revert patch. The most likely change to be controversial was I removed "free tagging" from the form descriptions and replaced it with simply "tags" to reflect the more common usage.
Comment #8
keith.smith commentedThanks catch!
I'm going over this in greater detail now, but after just a quick look I've got a couple of small items:
- Not really related to this patch, but what behavior does
really describe? I mean, if one creates a free-tagging vocabulary does Drupal set this to be true automatically? Or does it just ignore the setting if free-tagging is true? If I didn't know (and honestly, I don't), I'm not sure I would know more after reading the "always true for tags" part.
- I think I probably suggested more examples and moving away from Example:, but after looking at it, I think that Example: is probably more clear that i.e. . I'm sorry about that -- my bad.
- There is a small inconsistency in categorize/categorise in the help text.
- There are some sentence fragments in there: "To be displayed on taxonomy/term pages and RSS feeds."
I'm looking at the help text now....
Comment #9
dries commentedCommitted to CVS HEAD. Thanks all!
Comment #10
catchKeith:
I'd like to see that box checked and disabled if you select "tags" but don't know how to do it cleanly yet. The setting only affects how the form is displayed, so it's essentially ignored by the tagging autocomplete afaik. I agree the text could do with a touch-up but disabling outright would be better.
I thought I was doing pretty well sticking to American spelling but apparently not, well spotted. The rest all sounds sensible - bumping this so you see it before re-rolling, can just be a follow-up patch now.
Comment #11
catchMarking back to active for the followup.
Comment #12
keith.smith commentedhehe. Cross posted with Dries there.
Small patch attached changing the instances of categorise to categorize.
Congrats catch!!
Comment #13
keith.smith commented:)
Comment #14
catchGood good. Sorry about that.
Comment #15
dries commentedCommitted. :-)
Comment #16
(not verified) commentedAutomatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.