Meta-data is one of those things that seems like a really good idea, but like all plans, doesn't tend to survive contact with the enemy, which in this case is the user.
Like software development, the quality of the outcome is implementation dependent.
We run six thesauri, plus a number of different controlled lists for our users to input metadata. We don't publish any documents that don't have meta attached, and we perform random quality audits. Our users have been trained in fundamentals of classification and also in the payoff for getting it right.
We use metadata to structure our navigation for some sites, we depend on it for search for our internal documents. Our metadata implementation works incredibly well for us; clearly and consistently outperforming plain text indexing.
Slashdot Mirror
You rock, funniest thing I have seen all day :-) (but even if I had mod points, well you shouldn't be posting as AC)
Like software development, the quality of the outcome is implementation dependent.
We run six thesauri, plus a number of different controlled lists for our users to input metadata. We don't publish any documents that don't have meta attached, and we perform random quality audits. Our users have been trained in fundamentals of classification and also in the payoff for getting it right.
We use metadata to structure our navigation for some sites, we depend on it for search for our internal documents. Our metadata implementation works incredibly well for us; clearly and consistently outperforming plain text indexing.