I love this mini-thread against heirarchical file systems and in favor of something more intuitive. It has implications for the way all sites are organized.
People don’t think heirarchically. For every anal-retentive who thinks in outlines and organizes his life and files that way, there are tens of thousands of average users, some of them quite sophisticated, who have all their files in big piles on their virtual desktop.
I spent a lot of time on my recent vacation trying to organize thousands of digital photos and I’m more confused than ever about where things are stored.
The current system was designed by programmers and engineers for people who think like they do.
Think about the way that Amazon.com works. Any reasonable user begins every session with a search, not by clicking on a hierarchical menu. What does this tell us about the way that content sites should be organized?