Customizing Taxonomy Hierarchies

Taxonomies need to be custom-created for their purposes to be most effective. Basically, a taxonomy comprises the concepts or terms that reflect the subject domain of the content that will be tagged and retrieved with the aid of that taxonomy. Taxonomies must also be customized to the requirements (or limitations)…

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Polyhierarchy in Taxonomies

A defining characteristic of taxonomies is that terms/concepts are arranged in broader-narrower hierarchies, which may resemble tree structures. A limited number of top concepts each have narrower concepts, which in turn may have narrower concepts, etc., and the narrowest concepts at the bottom of the hierarchy are sometimes referred to…

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When a Taxonomy Should not be Hierarchical

The traditional taxonomy is hierarchical. Thus, after it is determined a taxonomy is needed, often it is thought that it should be designed as a hierarchy. However, in practical terms, a hierarchical taxonomy might not be the kind that is appropriate. A taxonomy provides value (1) as a controlled vocabulary…

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Avoiding Mistakes in Taxonomy Hierarchical Relationships

Perhaps the most important issue in designing a hierarchical taxonomy is creating hierarchical relationships between terms correctly. This makes the taxonomy intuitively easy to understand and navigate by all kinds of users, regardless of whether they have had any training on using a taxonomy. The basic principles of the hierarchical…

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