Thanks YMC - You got it. Rob, that's fine for that specific example, but are you going to duplicate your entire topical cat structure under /internet/forums/ too? Those responding that submitters should suggest categories better have submission guidelines making that clear and offering a category suggestion facility on the site submission form. Very few submitters are going to waste their time suggesting a category so that they have to come back in a week or so to then suggest their site.
I kind of get what you are saying now(with ymc's reply). Categories can always be refined of course, it's just that to be as specific is not as easy as stated, because some will look under shopping if that is the case, while others may be in need of an online/internet reference. Some may be looking for coupons under shopping and with forums that are related to what they are trying to find(in this example/case gardening/home). The variables are far too great to be able to cover all aspects and definitely one of the reasons a suggest category is needed. Yea, this stuff can be crazy at times I agree, and pinning it down would take years
YMC, I think the structure would be more user friendly as you are suggesting. Have the gardening section include a forum subcategory (if there is a gardening forum to list.. refer to previous post), etc. If a user wants to see sites about gardening, they aren't going to look in the internet>forums category. Instead, they would go straight for the gardening section. If that is what you mean, I think you have a good point.
Once apon a time I worked for a dot com company that had hired dozens of taxonomy experts to build out the taxonomy for a large number of vertical industries. They spent months apon months trying to get it just "right", but they ended up running out of time because the bubble burst and there was no longer any money to spend in developing the ideal category structure for businesses of all shapes and sizes. I've made some changes to the basic structure in my general directory to try and put forth a logical set of category choices for a VISITOR, but rather then stress over trying to figure out just what works best I just added a MOD that allows multiple categories. So you could add a gardenign forum in the forums category and the gardening category. If you had a store attached to your forums you could even add it to the home and garden section in the shopping category. It's the only way I know to offer a decent search experience for a visitor and satisfy a Web marketers desire to cast the "net" where they'll catch some "fish".
@Rob -> Yeppers... I'm challenging dir owners to put more thought into it though. @MattE -> Yes. @mauiman -> I have always appreciated directories (like Microsoft's sbd dir RIP) that allowed multiple cat listings for that reason. However, I still prefer directories that keep categories topically focused.
@mauiman -> Just had a look at bigguide... Bonus points to you for having sym cats. One demerit for having an SEO company in a computer science category...
Well I agree with Bernard, I'm not too fond of seeing categories such as "forums" or "blogs" at the top of the category tree, because it's not very intuitive. But when it comes to categories, there are a couple of things we have to recognise: we don't all think alike, and there's no way we are going to be able to come up with all the possibilities that a user will when they're searching for a particular type of website. So even if our category structure is "perfect", it's always going to disappoint a small number of visitors who have an unforeseen way of looking for information. This is where search boxes, symbolic links, and alternative category structures come in. This gives me an idea ...