I'm not sure I get it. Sure, all of these arguments are very nice, but how much do any of them have to do with TWiki? Just because TWiki has some support for hierarchical organization doesn't mean that everyone has to pay any attention to it. Also, just because TWiki only has direct support for a few different ways to organize topics doesn't mean that other means of organization are not available.

It seems that many of the arguments in SingleHierarchyStinks refer to the creation of mulitple webs to manage that hierarchy. And in that case, I agree that such a decision is ultimately very counter-productive. However, just because using webs for hierarchy is counterproductive doesn't mean that using webs at all has to be counter-productive. Using webs to separate unrelated realms of information, such as content and wiki-system-data, from each other is entirely valid. I know most users of my wiki would be very annoyed if they had to parse through user-topic changes every time they wanted to see what was new on the site. Here's another example: most of the current discussion on my wiki is about Linux. If I were to decide to create an additional forum for discussing, say, multimedia hardware (not all that far-fetched, given that the linked technical forum has a discussion area for A/V stuff), it might be practical to create a separate web for that. After all, many Linux people don't care about how neat the new sound card on the block is, and many people interested in discussing the latest in monitor technology have absolutely no interest in Linux. Putting both topics in the same web would force each group to constantly filter the activity on the web for their particular interests, to a far greater degree than would be necessary for separate, focused webs.

Also, having an automatically-supported hierarchy in the form of the topic parent links isn't all bad either; just because it's there doesn't mean you can't introduce any other parallel hierarchies you want, assuming you have some alternate implementation to represent them with.

-- WalterMundt - 02 Mar 2004

Walter, TWiki is focused on the concept of single hierarchy to the extent that creation of other hierarchies is made much more difficult. Consider one key aspect of TWiki in a corporate environment; security. TWiki security is heavily based around webs, and while it doesn't make implementing any other secure hierarchy any harder than it would be if there were no security support, it doesn't actually make it any easier, either.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 04 Mar 2004

CategoryOrganizingPrinciples