Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

January 31, 2012

The Heat in SharePoint Semantics: January 20 – January 27

Filed under: Findability,Microsoft,Searching,Semantics,SharePoint — Patrick Durusau @ 4:37 pm

The Heat in SharePoint Semantics: January 20 – January 27

Stephen Arnold writes:

As always, SharePoint Semantics has delivered many posts that are vitally important to both SharePoint end users and search enthusiasts alike.

Read Stephen’s post and then see: SharePoint Semantics for yourself.

From the tone of the posts I would say there are at least two very large issues that topic maps can address:

First, there is the issue of working with SharePoint itself. From these posts and other reports, it would be very generous to say that SharePoint has “documentation.” True there are materials that come with it, but either it doesn’t answer the questions users have and/or it doesn’t answer any questions at all. Opinions differ.

Using a topic map to provide a portal with useful and findable information about SharePoint itself seems like an immediate commercial opportunity. Suspect like most technical advice sites you would have to rely on ad revenue but from the numbers, it looks like people needing Sharepoint help is only going to increase.

Second, it is readily apparent that it is one thing to create data and store it in Sharepoint. It is quite another to make that information findable by others.

I don’t think that is entirely a matter of poor design or coding on the part of MS. I have never seen a useful SharePoint site but site design is left up to users. Even MS can’t increase the information management capabilities of the average user. Or at least I have never seen MS software have that result. 😉

The findability inside a SharePoint installation is an issue that topic maps can address. Like SharePoint, topic maps won’t make users more capable but they can put better tools at their disposal to assist in finding data. That isn’t speculation on my part, there is at least one topic map vendor that provides that sort of service for SharePoint installations.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I think offering better findability with topic maps isn’t going to be sufficient to drive market adoption. On the other hand, enhancing findability within contexts and applications that users are already using, may be the sweet spot we have been looking for.

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