Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blogging
WordPress has just made a significant change to the system. Like a lot of changes that are made long after the stable door is bolted this change looks ugly, is hard for them to explain and is fundamentally not quite hitting the nail on the head.
Tags and categories look and feel like descriptors that enable stuff to be filed and found using words that describe the contents of individual posts. Reading their description of the difference you get the feeling that they wanted to let users have sections in their blogs so that an item would be sorted into one section only. This is the way that we expect items to be printed in newspapers: an article is either in the magazine section, the business section, sport etc.
However, because they introduced this distinction on top of their previous system that supported one dimension of classification and because they left the classifications in place we end up with a real camel of a compromise.
We now have two dimensions that allow multiple descriptions per item. It may have been better if they had put all of the previous category stuff into the tag system. Or, they could have allowed each descriptor to be a tag and, optionally, category.
What we really, really need is a system that has, perhaps, a limited number of entry points and then a self configuring hierarchy that allows stuff to be found flexibly.
Take an item about an old map of Norwich. This could be tagged with Maps, Antiques, Norwich, East Anglia, England etc.
It makes sense to find the item using the following hierarchies
Maps/Antiques/UK/England/East Anglia/Norwich
or
UK/England/East Anglia/Norwich/Antiques/Maps
or
Norwich/Maps
Each search path is useful and can be constructed by the system on the fly. The top level entry points could be limited in number but the current system adds, rather than subtracts, to the confusion.
Economic stability has been one of the goals of the current British government. One of the measures of this has been the interest rates that people pay to build businesses and to buy their property. In the last ten years the mortgage rates have been tethered in a tight band that has enabled people to plan with greater confidence. The downside to this is that young consumers. those looking to buy their first or second houses, are not considering the risks of interest rates in the mid teens. This has encouraged them to stretch their finances further in the belief that interest rates will always sit in the comfortable 5-8% band.
My first mortgage in the mid eighties went, if I remember correctly, up to 16% but this was not an issue as I was subject to stricter rules about income multiples than current borrowers.
Which environment was better? The current bubble and reckless pursuit of growth has led to masssive immigration and an overheated economy that is going to come down with a bump.
There will be tears before bedtime!
The crisis in the banking system which culminated in Northern Rock’s near demise is now having a visible effect in the housing market. I was called yesterday by an estate agent who was keen to inform me that one of his properties had just been reduced in price by 13%. Also, a local estate agent has a shop window that now features a good number of properties with “New Price” emblazoned across them.
It is interesting watching this unfold as statistics are being mis-used in some fairly standard ways. The difference between descriptive and predictive statistics is a slightly subtle one that can be understood by understanding that just because prices have risen strongly over the last year does not imply that price rises will continue. The price is an indicator that lags behind a whole bunch of underlying factors and events, ephemeral consumer confidence being one of the most significant, that govern what people want to pay for a property.
