Feature request: categories

[astrokatie]

The existing tagging structure is good but some kind of broad categorization might be helpful, depending on the disciplines being targeted. For instance: Physics, Biology, Chemistry, etc. Tagging might not group something the authors call "astronomy" with something the authors call "cosmology," for instance, and a search term might not catch one or the other. If categories aren't desired, perhaps a running list of tags that have been used?

[physicsdavid]

In an alpha version we had a category but found that the categorization was either too shallow (and therefore incomplete) or too deep (and too specific to place a lot of things). And besides, we encourage interdisciplinary ideas that can't be categorized so easily. Tags will auto-suggest as you type though!

[astrokatie]

Can we have a tag word cloud? Or something similar to reduce the guess-work necessary in searching?

[physicsdavid]

We'll work on something!

[nichtich]

The benefit of any real category system is to refer to identified concepts instead of strings. How about just using Wikidata/Wikipedia for controlled categorization? Wikipedia contains both, broad concepts and very specialized terms. With Wikidata you may later get automatic mapping to other scientific classification schemes.

[arfon]

@nichtich - do you know where we could get a list of those terms? I'm certainly open to something along these lines. We were using this during testing and it wasn't particularly helpful.

[nichtich]

I have implemented tagging with Wikidata/Wikipedia here and here. Autocomplete is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=opensearch&limit=10&namespace=0&format=json&search=Exam and at https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbsearchentities&format=json&language=en&type=item&continue=0&search=Exam