Common Taxonomy Module (CT) Concept Create a Common Taxonomy that sites can take and edit to fit their own needs. Mod actually interfaces with a special Taxonomy Server site. Short Term Benefit to Drupal Site Owners- People creating new sites like it because it starts to save them work - they just import what they need and amend. This is the psychological key to success - site designers want ease and speed. Creating Taxonomy is tedious, and if we lighten that load, they'll use it. Initial Spin Off Benefit - a database of Drupal Site taxonomies. We make this searchable and soon it becomes a useful resource for people to find the right site, and sites to invite to “Clouds” (see below). Longer Term Spin Off Benefit - once a critical mass of sites exists then extra tools can be developed, esp re “Cloud” concepts where groups of sites offer some kind of “Affiliate Member” role to members of sites in the Cloud. E.g. “London Schools Cloud” or “Surfers Cloud”. It's not for us to worry about building such mods, we just want to lay the groundwork, and key to that is that they have taxonomy in common. Taxonomy Model Needs to be flexible, and fit with Drupal. I am not technical, but the following seems sensible. Seperate Structure from Display. Taxonomies comprise Terms, but Vocabs are used to group Terms in a useful but lose fashion. Very useful in terms of building the Editor part of the CT Mod.

• All Taxonomies have a Tree Structure.X.Y.Z...
• Terms are given meaning by their Breadcrumbs. E.g. World Geography.UK.Gloucestershire.Gloucester shows that Gloucester must be a place of some type in the UK, not to be confused with any other Gloucester.
• Terms are defined using language but then given a numerical value for code. This allows the CT to be language independent, both between languages (1.45=Rome =Roma) and within them (5.67 is Drug X = Brand Name in UK = Brand name in USA). In the latter case a search for Drug X would find sites in the USA and UK even if they only used the local brand name.
• New Terms are given a sequential unique number. (Managing this is one reason why the interface is via taxonomy server, below).

Role of Vocabulary Each dot in an address represents a potential Vocabulary. However Vocab labels are just for convenience, not part of the structure. Example World.UK.Gloucestershire.Brockworth is a taxonomy address of the term that is the proper name of the settlement of Brockworth in Gloucestershire, England. In Vocab terms it's Geography - World/Country/County/Settlement In Core taxonomies we will define the Core Vocabs, but each site will probably create their own that we can then offer as well. For example our Drugs Vocab might be a Drugs A to Z, but locally people might develop subvocabs based on Chemisty or Medical Effect. Called Submitted Vocabs. Note that while Core Vocabs will be fairly latge scale and formal in structure, tied closely to the taxonomy tree, Submitted Vocabs can be much looser. For example any Life Vocab we build would be based on Linnean taxonomy. However a Submitted Vocab of Garden Pests would take terms from all over the Life Taxonomy. Also Submitted Vocabs may require multiple listings (see case 2 below). Technical note - in effect Submitted Vocabs are folksonomy vocabs for terms. Degrees of Acceptance Core - Term/Vocab. These will be large scale taxonomies useful to many sites, and quite formal in nature e.g. Geography/Sports/Drugs etc. It will also include Submitted Vocabs that warrant inclusion on usefulness grounds. E.g Drugs Vocab might be just an A to Z, but one could imagine useful Submitted Vocabs based around type or purpose. From a practical point of view, we can create taxonomies based on easy to understand information, but useful Submitted Vocabs will normally reflect expertise in that field. For example we could provide a list of Artists but would leave it to others to group them into Cubists etc. Probationary - submitted by users (or extracted from autosubmitted taxonomy file). Interesting ones will be flagged for general use (e.g. Drugs by Chemical Type), and those that accumulate popularity might get migrated to Core. Feedback also lets us see how many sites use a term, and we can take that into account when assessing if good for Core, or worthy of further development by us. Fringe - the long tail of obscure. Main use will be within search to allow people to find that drupal site dealing with Ford Cortinas of the 1970's.... Scoring It is probably worthwhile putting a “used in X sites” score by each Vocab and Term. This will mainly be used in display in the edit kit, allowing most popular to be shown first. Taxonomy Building and Feedback Toolkit Everything is done on the Taxonomy Server site. This has to be the case to allow for the numerical aspect of term addresses. (We cannot have people creating new terms locally then uploading, due to potential clash issues). I'll describe the process from the users end, so that programmers can build the right technical model. Case 1 - Core is good enough. Example - Ruby on Rails site Owner accesses Taxonomy Server site, and navigates the taxonomy tree by Vocab names. He mainly wants people to groub around tech stuff and maybe by country. Chooses to use the entire Countries Vocab, and the right bits of the IT taxonomy. Mods takes his selections and applies them to his site. But note - we now know that RoRSite has used which terms. This info goes into our “Find Sites” service. Case 2 - Requires creation of a Submitted Vocab Example - Cardiologists Club Owner uses Countries Vocab and the previously Submitted Vocab “Heart Conditions”, which, being a professional, he renames “Cardiac Diseases and Conditons”. So far, so good. Then he comes to Drugs A to Z. He needs a “Cardiology Drugs” Vocab. Chooses “Create New Vocab”. Instruction “Choose Terms” - by default from the current Vocab, ie. Drugs A to Z, but would also offer taxonomy tree nav options. He selects the terms from Drugs Z to A. Submits. Option - Should this be a Submitted Vocab? Select YES if you think that other people might need it. If Yes, supply some details as to what it is for and it will be reviewed. He chooses Yes, types some notes and Submits. The system then creates on the Taxonomy Server the new Submitted Vocab, and passes his total taxonomy back to his site. We get a message to the effect that a new Submitted Vocab has been uploaded. We get the name, the list of terms and, for each term, the full address. In this case we'd decide it was good one, call it Heart Drugs and put in the same selection group as Drugs A to Z, and also under say Health/Heart as that would be an eqaully logical place to put it. It is then available for others to use. Note - there would of course be a “Add NEW Term” option as well, but that's really covered below. Case 3 - Extending a Core Vocab Example - Beetle Specialists Working Party Every few weeks they name a new species of Beetle. Owner accesses Taxonomy Server and Adds Term to the appropriate Genus/Species Vocab. Done. It's there for whoever uses it next. As Probationary. We'd see it and either leave it or migrate it to Core. Main use for this will be when people are adding detail to main taxonomies such as filling in local Geography. We'll kick of the Core with Countries and maybe the main subdivisions of major countries, but that's it. The first person who needs a gazzetteer of Gloucestershire, creates it, and then it's there for everyone else to use. Does this make any sense? Can it be done?