Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.I had a little discussion with catch lately about the terms 'Taxonomy', 'term' and 'vocabulary'. Although at the time he had me convinced those terms do the job very well, I am a little less convinced now, particularly when it comes to translating those terms. According to Wikipedia "Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification." and in a way using this name for the Drupal categorisation system makes perfect sense. On the other hand I have several reasons to object:
- Newcomers don't know what Taxonomy does and need to learn what 'terms' and 'vocabularies' are before they are able to use the module
- Drupal's being inconsistent with the rest of the internet as every CMS uses the term 'category'
- How do we translate it? At least in the Dutch translation I (among others) am working on we don't translate module names. As the Dutch word for 'taxonomy' is hardly known among the Dutch (ordinary people just don't use that term but another one) Taxonomy makes even less sense. I can imagine this is the case with other languages as well. 'Category' would be a more general term to translate. I believe most people who have English as a secondary language will also know what a category means in an instant.
It's not that I have the perfect solution, but I do want to make clear that in my opinion it would be wise to give those terms some thoughts and perhaps we should rename them. The best I can come up with now is 'category' for vocabularies and 'sub-category' for terms.
Comments
Comment #1
-Anti- commentedHi,
I read the other thread with interest (http://drupal.org/node/192209) , and as a complete noob to Drupal,
with my first experiences still very fresh in my mind, my thoughts may be worth something to the discussion.
IMO, the problem is not the language particularly: 'taxonomy', 'vocabulary' and 'term' are fine (in English,
anyway). Yes, I needed to look them up, but it was no more difficult than learning any other Drupal-specific
language.
The real problem is, IMO, that Drupal has shifted paradigm towards 'tags and views', and away from the
'sections' model that all other CMS follow. In other CMS, new users expect to have:
- a news section script
- an articles section script
- a downloads section script
- a gallery section script
- a blog section script
etc
... all part of core, and each with its own specific input, publishing and display options already set-up.
With Drupal, it's quite a shock to publish content that doesn't automatically 'belong' in a particular
'section' of your site. It is also a surprise to find out that you have to install modules to do the basic
things listed above, rather than Drupal doing them out-of-the-box like every other CMS.
However, once the user understands the 'tag and views' concept, the taxonomy module is fairly
straight forward. But whilst tagging content is easy, it's not apparent how to actually view your
content as different 'sections'. In other words, it's easy to tag nodes with the item 'news', but then
how the hell do you display them in a way that user would recognise as a 'news section' (BTW, I'm
still trying to figure that out 6 weeks after downloading Drupal - that's nothing to do with taxonomy
problems, and everything to do with the views module).
So if there is a problem, I think it is that the view module is not core, and that the Drupal documents
don't actually explain the whole paradigm, the whole concept, of 'tag and views' very well.
In my opinion, your time would be better spent trying to improve the multi-language aspect of tagging,
or similar issues. Or writing a document which explains how tagging is used in conjunction with views.
Or making a Drupal installation profile with some popular taxonomy and views already set-up.
Debating language semantics isn't necessary IMO.
Cheers.
Comment #2
xanoI'm not bothering with using/viewing Taxonomy. What I _am_ having trouble with is what you call the language semantics. Saying that once users know what those terms mean they will have no problem anymore is no valid reason. If users are having trouble with those terms that means those terms are a problem that should be solved. If users have to look up Drupal terminology every time there's something wrong and that's what this thread is about.
Comment #3
Anonymous (not verified) commentedI couldn't agree more. Therefore I've set this issue as a task because as a bug report it will quickly become "won't fix" or "by design" since we've just went round about on the point.
Comment #4
mikey_p commentedYou are aware of http://drupal.org/node/192209, yet you didn't post a link to that issue here. I would have marked this a duplicate of that issue, but that one was arguing the other direction.
Comment #5
xanoOh, now we've got it. The reasons for creating that issue are not the same as the ones for creating this one. That one was about (internal) consistency, this one is about proper naming. I find it a bit odd to discard an issue without even replying to the mentioned arguments.
Comment #6
-Anti- commented> What I _am_ having trouble with is what you call the language semantics. Saying that once users know what those terms mean they will have no problem anymore is no valid reason. If users are having trouble with those terms that means those terms are a problem that should be solved.
I take your point, but it is the same with any CMS. Eg.
A 'block' in php-nuke is not quite the same thing as a 'block' in 'xoops' or 'joomla'.
A wiki 'article' is not like the 'articles' in other CMS.
So moving to any new CMS introduces some new concepts and vocabulary, and requires
learning how and why the cms does things in a particular way. I don't think that can be
lessened by all the cms using the same terms, because the terms will still refer to slightly
different implementations and concepts.
The taxonomy part of drupal only really has three words to learn - it literally takes ten minutes
to discover what those three words mean. What may cause hours of confusion for some people
is not the words, but the actual conceptualisation behind them.
And I think it is *this* that should perhaps be emphasised when dealing with the percieved problem,
rather than trying to rename those three words to convey a 'pre-conceived notion' to a noob.
I really do think that most of the initial noob confusion lies with how taxonomy is actually utilised
in conjunction with creating 'views', and further, that noobs may not even realise that 'views'
replace the 'sections model' which other cms are based upon.
In my opinion, this is the fault of the 'getting started' documentation, and that 'views' is not core.
Comment #7
Anonymous (not verified) commented@mikey_p: Let's leave it active until a documentation patch can be achieved. @-Anti-: You seem to be able to express the confusion nicely; would you be willing to provide the documentation changes?
Comment #8
xano@-Anti-: Documentation might be improved, but I still think those words sound strange to anyone new to Drupal unless you're a linguist. People in general don't really like the unknown just because it's... unknown. They can look it up, yes, but they will remain strange for a while. As we all know Drupal isn't a CMS that really appeals to newcomers the first time they see it because of it's lack of design (Not that Garland is ugly, just not flashy) and because it looks a bit complicated. This is why I'm trying to create my Drupal stuff as simple as possible (KISS) and in this case try to suggest changes to core.
My thoughts at this moment: Rename vocabularies to 'categories' and write some documentation in which is explained that categories can be linked to certain content types. Terms would then be sub-categories that can be put beneath a category. The docs should clarify nodes cannot be posted in categories but only in sub-categories.
I think this way the whole classification/taxonomy/category system would appeal more to newcomers _and_ because of the more extensive documentation it would be clear to them that taxonomy is nothing weird and unknown, only a more powerful and flexible classification system not used by other CMSs.
Comment #9
-Anti- commented> My thoughts at this moment: Rename vocabularies to 'categories'
Of course, you must argue for what you think is right.
But IMO, 'categories' in all other cms is what you put actual content into:
- the news script will allow you to create some categories to put your 'news content' into
- the articles script allows you to creat some categories to out your 'article content' into.
Categories are decentralised, and specific to separate scripts. Eg Usually the 'article' script
is used to put an article into a articles category. Then there is usually a 'recent articles'
block on the frontpage, and/or a news item is created mentioning and linking to the article.
To view articles by category, the user navigates to the articles section, and the script
automatically provides an archive list of articles in each category. In all other cms, there
is no way for an 'article' to end up being listed by the 'news' script, in amongst news items.
Because they have this pre-conception of what 'categories' means, new users to Drupal will
still be confounded if 'vocabularies' are called 'categories', because 'categories' is a word
they're used to, and have already associated a meaning to it. In the case of Drupal they
will have to firstly find out the hard way that their association is wrong, and secondly, will
have to re-learn what that word actually means conceptually within Drupal anyway.
BTW, can I ask a question:
If a user did want to change the language: 'taxonomy', 'vocabulary/vocabularies' and 'term(s)',
can't you just download the core language po files, and use 'search and replace' to change them
in all places they occur? Or is it more difficult than that?
Cheers.
Comment #10
Anonymous (not verified) commentedRE: vocabularies versus categories
Vocabulary explains exactly what we have; a list of words. Categories on the other hand are classifications of a common attribute. We don't have categories we have vocabularies so you need to become more of a linguist researcher.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Avocabulary
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Acategory
There is really nothing wrong with learning new things unless you're too lazy to learn.
Comment #11
xano@-Anti-: Yes, you can do a search and replace (although I would check each occurrence manually, because the use in one context might differ from another context). I personally would not replace all those occurrences if not really necessary, because it's a lot of work and it will come back to you when you try to update the language files (which will practically never happen).
Comment #12
mikey_p commentedTagging with 'needs usability review.'
Comment #13
jhodgdonMoving to correct component and adding tags. Documentation component is for API documentation. This is specific to taxonomy module.
Comment #14
yoroy commented'Categories' seems like a decent option for a simpler word that's still broad enough to capture the gist of all possibilities within. We should try to use simpler words in the user interface.
And that's your usability review :)
Comment #15
yoroy commented#1160292: Rename "Taxonomy" to "Tags" marked duplicate