[Imc-sydney] Sydney basin map

Tue Mar 13 13:34:56 UTC 2007

In practice I don't think any Australian state has more than one IMC, so
in terms of what should be published on a given site, I reckon the
boundaries should be seen as extending at least that far.  If more IMCs
pop up, then I guess space gets divided further.

There are a bunch of issues that don't obviously belong to a specific
IMC's geographical area.  eg Refugees on Christmas Island or Sea
Shepherd's adventures in the south seas.

Designing taxonomies (geographical, topical, etc) is difficult stuff to
do well, mostly because there's lots of subtle tradeoffs being made and
it's easy to loose sight of what it's all for.  Creating categories
(including geographical boundaries) in order to have some tag to apply
to content is, in of itself, useless and a bit of a trap.  Think of that
as content driven category creation.  Similarly laying out categories in
order to try to map out your mental model of how you as the publisher
see it as grouped it has a number of pitfalls.  One of these is mapping
out content based on institutional boundaries which the user doesn't
really care about.  Eg in this case laying out geographical divisions
according to where IMCs are located makes organisational sense, but it
isn't necessarily helpful to the user.  I'm not sure that watersheds are
all that relevant either.

The golden rule is to always put the user(s) first.   Try to come at it
from the point of view of  solving the problem of enabling the user(s)
to find the material they want.  If a user has to look into a lot of
different categories to find something, then you've probably got too
many categories.  Likewise, categories with little or no content should
be gotten rid of.  If a user has to look through overly long lists of
stuff in a given category to find the few things they're after, then
you've probably got too few categories.

If anyone cares to go into this stuff a bit, I highly recommend the
O'Riley Polar bear book 'Information Architecture'.  Actually I
recommend that to anyone involved in structuring websites. 
www.boxesandarrows.com also has lots of good stuff, though it might be
jumping in the deep end if you're unfamiliar with this area.

Andrew

ned haughton wrote:
> Please note: this list is archived and searchable via the web.
> there are cultural/social divides between
> sydney/newcastle/centralcoast/bluemountains/woolongong as well as
> geographical boundaries (newie is like 4 watersheds away from sydney!).
>
> I reckon, add Newcastle, then add the others as they are requested.
> perhaps there should be a Sydney cat, as well as a Sydney Basin cat?
>
> I support interstellar, as long as there's some news to go in it
> already. would look stupid to have an empty category (there are already
> at least 2 newie pieces)
>
> what about interplanar? come one people, think broad here! :D
>
> ned
>
> Cameron Gregg wrote:
> >> Please note: this list is archived and searchable via the web.
> >> Cameron Gregg wrote:
> >>> Welcome Ned!
> >>>
> >>> ned haughton wrote:
> >>>> hey all.
> >>>> I'd love to be able to put up newcastle stuff on an IMC, but I don't
> >>>> have time right now to set one up. hopefully I will in the
> future, but
> >>>> in the meantime, Cam suggested creating a "Newcastle" category (maybe
> >>>> even "central coast" and "south coast" too? anyone from there?)
> for the
> >>>> geographic location. I'd like to express support for that.
> >>>>
> >>> I definitely support adding Newcastle as a geographic category. My
> >>> main reason is because we now have someone on the ground there as part
> >>> of the collective / posting stories about the area.
> >>>
> >>> I'm not sure about central coast and south coast, I'll have to think
> >>> on that for a bit. In that same sense we could have a 'Blue Mountains'
> >>> category as well. It certainly might make it more inclusive of people
> >>> in  those surrounding areas.
> >>>
> >> Here is some Sydney basin bioregion maps in pdf format:
> >>
> http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/npws.nsf/Content/Sydney+Basin+-+maps
> >>
> >> Sydney basin appears to go north just past newcastle to Nelson bay,
> >> North-west to Scone, West to Katoomba, and South to Ulladulla.
> >>
> >> Take a look. Do we want to try to encompass past these areas with
> >> Central/south coast and Blue mountains/Western Plain?  or just add
> >> towns/areas within this such as Newcastle? or both?
> >>
> >>
> >> While we are on the topic of new Geographical categories, does anyone
> >> mind if I add 'intersteller' below international? Seriously, so news
> >> about happenings in outerspace have a category.
> >>
> >> Cam
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