How to tag and categorize Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Question

Jokes aside, I am trying to build a tag hierarchy for a library of icons that could contain potentially anything. The problem is how to make clear and simple hierarchy of (most) objects? I am not trying to make super specific categories, just to help users with searching (if I can narrow down 10k icons into categories of 100s that should be already a big help).

I started doing it myself from scratch but feel that making it right is very challenging. I am sure some studies were done already on this subject. Can anyone please point me to the right direction?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You probably dont want a hierarchy, but instead a collection of tags about each icon. Then you can select only the icons which have all of the requested tags.

The real problem is the Parent/Child problem. Do icons of children have parents, or do parents have children? If you say parents have children, you double up the children in the hierarchy, because each of the children have to be under each of the parents. The same is true if you view it the opposite way. It is often better (particularly for what you are proposing) to just assign attributes to each "person" for who their children are and who their parents are. Then you can let the user decide what the tree looks like.

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes

Answer 3

Ask for people to add tags and a description to any icon then provides a search engine. They is no other way : nobody goes through 1000 categories to find a content anymore. If they see a big index page, they bounce and google the pic they are looking for.