4 ms·

All true. Taxonomy is indeed hard. But, does it actually matter? It seems what matters is not how files are stored/organized, but how one can find the files on

by bambax 4y ago

All true. Taxonomy is indeed hard. But, does it actually matter? It seems what matters is not how files are stored/organized, but how one can find the files one is looking for. Taxonomy is mostly a search problem. Yet, although one is usually capable of remembering specific or unique details about a file, it's still incredibly hard to search for a file or its contents effectively. Dropbox, to pick just one example, ditched all its advanced search functionalities a couple of years ago and only allows to search for any keyword (not all of them), with forced stemming, and no filtering of the results. I seem to remember there were startups a decade ago trying to address the search problem on the desktop but they all got acquired or folded; I don't understand why. The problem is real and seems quite solvable; yet it seems there's no actual market for it. It's a bit of a mystery.

pjc50 4y ago
> startups a decade ago trying to address the search problem on the desktop but they all got acquired or folded; I don't understand why. Work migrated to the cloud.
em500 4y ago
MacOS and Windows got built in search around 15 years ago. Anything more advanced would be very niche, so there's probably no market left.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Windows search only finds things sporadically though. I turned off search indexing on my Mac because otherwise I'd have to go out for coffee when I open any application.
- Someone 4y ago
  More like 25 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_8 had it in 1998 (possibly earlier. It isn’t clear to me whether Sherlock became PowerPC native in 8.5 or was new and PowerPC native in 8.5), Windows NT in 1996/2000 (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-search-platform/the-evolution-of-windows-search/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-search-platform/the-e...)
vsareto 4y ago
I'd guess only a small portion of people actually care for that feature. People are maybe better at remembering what's in their files by name alone than we give them credit, or willing to just look through things to find them, or are better organized via folders than we might assume. Important for technical users, not so much regular people.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> it's still incredibly hard to search for a file or its contents effectively. Underappreciated aspect of this is trust. As much as "taxonomy is mostly a search problem", search is in large part a trust problem - trust that the search was done exhaustively, and if it returned no results, it means there aren't any. This is a problem that IMO most offerings are blind to. One big offender for me is Windows Explorer. It has a search tool that can search both in names, metadata and file content. Yet in the past, it frequently failed to find files I knew were there. Truth is, it may not have been even looking in the right place - it depends on what's been indexed and how, which is information you can find somewhere in the system, but notably not in the search interface itself. I've stopped using it long ago, as I don't trust it at emotional level. I prefer to literally walk the filesystem structure by hand. And, on Windows, I at least get that option. This is the fallback, the baseline: even if I don't trust a search engine to be exhaustive, I can cope with it as long as I can perform an exhaustive search manually. I.e. as long as I have a way to list everything. But this, then, is almost universally missing from cloud offerings. (There's a whole rant to be written about the incredibly dumb idea of hiding the filesystem / database from the end-user, but I'll skip it today.) > there were startups a decade ago trying to address the search problem on the desktop but they all got acquired or folded; I don't understand why. The problem is real and seems quite solvable; yet it seems there's no actual market for it. It's a bit of a mystery. Nobody really wants to solve this problem anymore, because it conflicts with the major thing vendors want: for you to move your data into their cloud. The desktop, and the ability to own your data, survives only because most cloud systems are still shit. This might eventually change, and in the meantime, the market definitely isn't interested in helping you own your data.
- bambax 4y ago
  > because it conflicts with the major thing vendors want Maybe, but that doesn't explain why there are no startups on the case, that wouldn't have this conflict of interest.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Who would fund those, and where's the potential for outsized growth?
jbverschoor 4y ago
True if you know what you're looking for. But apparently discovery is highly underrated by many.
- geephroh 4y ago
  Yes! I think this is a key concept that is often overlooked. Taxonomies -- and ontologies for that matter -- can often serve as a guide to the corpus, particularly when a user has less familiarity with the knowledge space. And yes, any taxonomy is by definition always a subjective, biased construct. But this is often useful in helping to reveal the preferences and motivations behind the creation and curation of the corpus itself.
DeathArrow 4y ago
For Windows there's Everything a pretty good search tool. https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/ https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/

by bambax 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

> startups a decade ago trying to address the search problem on the desktop but they all got acquired or folded; I don't understand why. Work migrated to the cloud.

em500 4y ago

MacOS and Windows got built in search around 15 years ago. Anything more advanced would be very niche, so there's probably no market left.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Windows search only finds things sporadically though. I turned off search indexing on my Mac because otherwise I'd have to go out for coffee when I open any application.
Someone 4y ago
More like 25 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_8 had it in 1998 (possibly earlier. It isn’t clear to me whether Sherlock became PowerPC native in 8.5 or was new and PowerPC native in 8.5), Windows NT in 1996/2000 (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-search-platform/the-evolution-of-windows-search/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-search-platform/the-e...)

vsareto 4y ago

I'd guess only a small portion of people actually care for that feature. People are maybe better at remembering what's in their files by name alone than we give them credit, or willing to just look through things to find them, or are better organized via folders than we might assume. Important for technical users, not so much regular people.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

> it's still incredibly hard to search for a file or its contents effectively. Underappreciated aspect of this is trust. As much as "taxonomy is mostly a search problem", search is in large part a trust problem - trust that the search was done exhaustively, and if it returned no results, it means there aren't any. This is a problem that IMO most offerings are blind to. One big offender for me is Windows Explorer. It has a search tool that can search both in names, metadata and file content. Yet in the past, it frequently failed to find files I knew were there. Truth is, it may not have been even looking in the right place - it depends on what's been indexed and how, which is information you can find somewhere in the system, but notably not in the search interface itself. I've stopped using it long ago, as I don't trust it at emotional level. I prefer to literally walk the filesystem structure by hand. And, on Windows, I at least get that option. This is the fallback, the baseline: even if I don't trust a search engine to be exhaustive, I can cope with it as long as I can perform an exhaustive search manually. I.e. as long as I have a way to list everything. But this, then, is almost universally missing from cloud offerings. (There's a whole rant to be written about the incredibly dumb idea of hiding the filesystem / database from the end-user, but I'll skip it today.) > there were startups a decade ago trying to address the search problem on the desktop but they all got acquired or folded; I don't understand why. The problem is real and seems quite solvable; yet it seems there's no actual market for it. It's a bit of a mystery. Nobody really wants to solve this problem anymore, because it conflicts with the major thing vendors want: for you to move your data into their cloud. The desktop, and the ability to own your data, survives only because most cloud systems are still shit. This might eventually change, and in the meantime, the market definitely isn't interested in helping you own your data.

bambax 4y ago
> because it conflicts with the major thing vendors want Maybe, but that doesn't explain why there are no startups on the case, that wouldn't have this conflict of interest.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Who would fund those, and where's the potential for outsized growth?

jbverschoor 4y ago

True if you know what you're looking for. But apparently discovery is highly underrated by many.

geephroh 4y ago
Yes! I think this is a key concept that is often overlooked. Taxonomies -- and ontologies for that matter -- can often serve as a guide to the corpus, particularly when a user has less familiarity with the knowledge space. And yes, any taxonomy is by definition always a subjective, biased construct. But this is often useful in helping to reveal the preferences and motivations behind the creation and curation of the corpus itself.

DeathArrow 4y ago

For Windows there's Everything a pretty good search tool. https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/ https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/