Category terminology consistency

I have collected a few quotes from people on taxonomy.

"Why do you put taxonomy under classification, when it clearly is taxonomy. I searched my site for ages, after reading about Drupals taxonomy, but never thought it would be stuck under classification"

"This is really confusing: You have classifications, terms, vocabularies and taxonomy. I understand that terms are the tags in a vocabularies and that that is called taxonomy, but what is the relation with classification?"

"What drives me nuts is the fact that you (drupal.org) keep on giving examples with "directories", or "how the world sticks together in taxonomies", how they can be used to make my navigation wowee. But nowhere is anything to be found about how I can use it to simply add three or four sections to my weblog!"

(this is a random cut from various Dutch quotes from clients)

the commom denominator is:
We use FAR too many different words for one thing. It should be either classification (in which case we must find a new name for trees (voc) and terms (tags) ), OR taxonomy+term+vocabulary. We fail to fullfill (explain) the simple needs by diving right into "the enormous power of taxonomy".

taxonomy, the word, is not the problem. The interface and the explanation is.

On top of that, I found that when having a simple set of example taxonomies, there is nothing going on. Taxonomy is not hard to grok, its the power and uses of that power, that are hard.

Bèr

What progress have we made on this issue? We should reopen the dialog on this issue.

Judging by the help text in Categories admin in Drupal beta 2, none:

"The taxonomy module allows you to classify content into categories and subcategories; it allows multiple lists of categories for classification (controlled vocabularies) and offers the possibility of creating thesauri (controlled vocabularies that indicate the relationship of terms), taxonomies (controlled vocabularies where relationships are indicated hierarchically), and free vocabularies where terms, or tags, are defined during content creation. 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".

Nobody can grok this!

Even more confusing, when you have no vocabularies at all, the list message is "No categories available". But you can't create categories, you have to create vocabularies.

"Categories" is just the admin page's name, it is not used anywhere else. In fact it would be less confusing if the admin page was named "Classification".

We should use the term Category when referring to the feature.

We should use the term Category Set when referring to a vocabulary.

We should user the term Category when referring to the terms of a vocabulary

We should use the term Add Categories when referring to the action adding terms to a Category set

we should use the term Add Category Set when referring to the action of creating a new vocabulary.

What do you think gang?

On second thought, I found this issue: http://drupal.org/node/48576

There they suggest a naming of Categories (category, term, keywords)

I like that, but I'm confused. I've tried to create a new vocabulary and terms in my test site and I only see the creation process as 2 levels deep. I create a vocabulary and I create terms for that vocabulary, but I can't create anything that is grouped for that term.

Is there a consensus to avoid the word "tag"? "Tag" is used everywhere these days, everybody knows what a tag is. "Term" is more vague, but maybe "tag" now has too many meanings as they are used and misused in very different ways on the web.
A category would be described as a group -or a set- of tags on a particular topic.

Categories / Category set / tag?

Also, keep in mind that each "term" can have children terms ("subcategory sets", if you prefer)

I use the del.icio.us bookmark service. They also utilize terminology of tags. They call each "term" a tag. For them tags are their atomic unit. You then are able to group tags into Bundles. You can also group bundles into bundles.

Perhaps this bottom-up organization is best.

IMO, this issue is resolved with the extra descriptive text on /admin/structure of Drupal 7. At this point I don't think there will be support for changing this terminology for the Drupal 7 release.

From a user point of view, the word "Taxonomy" is never seen. The only see the word "Tags" when creating content. So the confusion of what a "Taxonomy" is (though the answer is an internet search away) is only given to site administrators. This may be something that is new in Drupal 7.

Amazon's OP called for improved documentation for Taxonomies as well. In my view, http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/taxonomy provides an excellent guide for understanding and using taxonomies.

All of this makes me want to mark this issue as fixed, since many of the points listed above seems to have been acted upon. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

the association to usability was lost.