Sometimes you need to take a set of items and convert it into a hierarchy or tree of categories. Here are some steps to do so.
- Enumerate all your content
- Gather a group of people
- Select 30-60 examples at random
- Collectively brainstorm all the words that describe the items
- Individually break out and tag the items by the words identified
- Consolidate so you have created a tree, ideally no more than 3 layers deep and 7 across
- Attempt to take another random sampling and fit it into the tree
- Refine the categories into appropriate phrases
The depth limit of 3 is because people seem to have a hard time understanding hierarchies deeper than that. Expanding the number of sub-categories within one category beyond 7 means that a search will be required within the category and the whole point of a taxonomy is to avoid that. Speaking of that, why don’t you consider using tags and a search instead of a taxonomy?
802701 A.D. 