[Clipart] [Open Clip Art Library] Web Site

[Frederik Elwert]

Hi!

Am Donnerstag, den 22.11.2007, 10:06 +0000 schrieb
noreply at openclipart.org:
> Please take this as a friendly advice.
> I think that you have messed up the web site since I last visited it a
> couple of months ago. I find it now virtually impossible to find any
> particular clip art

We all know that there are some problems in user-friendliness at the
moment. There are people working on this. But from a technical point of
view, it was necessary to switch to a more flexible system, as far as I
know. So I believe the developers when they say that OCAL had to switch
to a new system.

>  - I was just looking for some decent file and folder icons and
> finding some on the site is impossible (or I can't find the means to
> do so). Tagging seems to be a great idea... but look at that tag page:
> There are a few tags with so many entries that it's just not worth
> looking at them for the large number,

I don't agree on this one. Tagging has the huge advantage of providing
something I tend to call "ad-hoc directory structures". E.g., take the
huge animal tag. Of course you don't want to look through all the
animals. But you can think of it like the old "animal" directory. Once
you selected that tag, you get a smaller list of tags that are used
together with "animal". Now add "dog" from that list (+), and you get
only the clipart that has the "animal" and "dog" tag. Now you might want
to further refine your selection and add "puppy" to it.

Tagging has all benefits from hierarchical directory structures, but it
is much more flexible.

>  and a whole load of tags attached to only one or two images.

I'd rather agree on this one. Some tags are just too specific. There is
a list of "suggested tags" on the submit page, but maybe one should do
more to keep a reasonable amount of tags.

> I really liked that old directory structure. I guess you thought it
> was not flexible enough, and maybe you are right. But the way it is
> works even less, at least for me.

I hope I could point you to how to use the tagging system as if it were
a directory structure. And I also hope that the ccHost system will
improve further so that users really can see its strengths. But this
relies on the contributions of volunteers.

Cheers,
Frederik