Eastern Taxonomy

[Rob A]

I know there is a whole taxonomy fourm but I fugured we know our mountains better and responces would be faster.

Puma's Northeast 115 page is the example for my question.

My queston is, are the mountains in lists children of those lists? Puma has made all the mts. in his list children of the list. To me the only thing that should pe a parent to a mountains is the range(s) and/or area(s)that it is in. Lists, ablums, TR's, huts, and all the other things should be childern or related. What do you guy's think?

Sorry if my wording does not make sence, I am very tired.

[CharlesD]

I disagree. If a mountain is part of some list (like the NE115) as well as a range (like the Presidentials), both lists should be noted on the mountain page. I agree that this makes things a bit lengthy on the left side, but it's a bit more complete.

Also, taxonomy is a $3 word. Cool.

[Catamount]

Hey, we just got our Taxonomy return in the mail a few days ago so life is good.

Anyway, I didn't do this without thinking about it. If you do a search on all of the lists on SPv2, you will see that Josh set them all up with children when he switched things over ... including our "U.S. State High Points" and Bob's "Southern Sixers." Additionally, before creating the page, I inquired about this over on Page Help and Gangolf basically told me to go for it. I realize a list of 115 mountains is long but it only shows the top 30 in the margin on the left.

- Mark

[nartreb]

One disadvantage of list proliferation is that the top-left-corner gets easily confused.
Sometimes, you see "White Mountains > Presidential Range > Mt Washington", and sometimes you just see "US State High Points > Mt Washington." (You can see the other parents by clicking the little "+" sign by "US High Points", but you lose info about nesting relationships).
Similarly, I think the order of lists on the left tab is by maximum elevation, so a small peak in the Whites has all the Whites listed above the particular range that it's in.

I've taken to adding my own links at the beginning of the Overview section of my mountain pages, so the "real" taxonomy is always obvious.

For lists, as opposed to ranges, I think it would be better to make the list related to the mountains, not a parent. The list page has all the mountains listed on it, it doesn't need a list of mountains in the left tab. The Mt Washington page really doesn't need a left-hand column listing of all the US state Highpoints, AND all the NE Hundred Highest, AND all the NE 115, AND all the NE Fifty Finest, AND all the NH("White Mountain") 48, AND all the NH County Highpoints, AND Skiable Mountains of the Northeast, AND... It should have a link to each of those lists, and Related Objects seems like the right place for that.

The US State Highpoints list was "grandfathered in" since it existed before anybody started discussing Eastern taxonomy, and later automatically promoted to group-page status. It may be time to demote it.

[Catamount]

All of my children are legitimate ... or at least the ones I know about!!!

I'll address each of the lists separately.

First, regarding the Northeast 115, it doesn't make much difference to me whether the mountains are "related" or "children." Either way, I achieve the same objective and as long as I know I can attach 102 related items, I will do this eventually. This isn't exactly a 5-minute fix, however, and it would have been nice if this had been brought up before I spent two hours attaching these mountains. My intentions were out there and the page was up two days before I did this. No point crying over spilt milk, however.

Regarding the State High Points list, this thing is kind of taking on a life of its own and we've already had one big hoo-ha over the children/attached lists. Some have expressed that they like the Google mashup that you get by clicking on the "Map" icon at the top of the list of children. You don't get this with related mountains and I'm not going to even try to touch this with a 10-foot pole at this point. If someone tells us we have to detach them, we will do so ... otherwise I suspect they will remain children.

Thanks for the imput.

[Rob A]

Now that I have thought about the 115 I think they are fine as "children" for 2 reasons.
1)The list covers an area that streaches from an hour north of NYC to Katahdin. The area is to big to a area/range page for so a list is the next best thing and just like everyother area range shuld be a parent.
2) also it makse sence. North Amreica-> NE 115-> Adirondacks->Great Range-> Mt. Marcy.
I think it should stay as is.