HypertextVsHierarchy

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Thoughts on HyperText

When you organize things you to put them in their correct place, in the hope that this makes it easier to find them again later.

Hierarchy is the usual way of organizing pages.

But really, this is an impoverished way of improving findability. A hangover from the organization of physical books and documents that couldn't be in more than one place at once. Hypertext is the alternative, which relies on the SmallWorld properties of networks. When your data is structured as a densely linked hypertext, few pages are very far from any others. Findability is improved by having a short route to where you need to go. Especially when it's well marked by TypedLinksNotClassifiedPages.

Probably there's some comparison to be made here with MarketsVsCommandEconomies

Possible counter arguments

Course, it all needs some testing ...

See also IsNotATree, OnWiki

Beware HypertextSickness