There is an ongoing thread at LinkedIn, started by Steve Pepper, on what would we do differently today in designing topic maps?
I posted this as a starting point on that redesign today:
Just a sketch but suppose the components were:
Topics: Represent subjects (anything you want to talk about).
Associations: Relationships between subjects (which are represented by topics)
A relationship is a subject but it is useful to have a simple way to talk about relationships between subjects.
Occurrences: Where you find a subject in a topic map or some other information resource. Quite like page numbers in an index entry.
An occurrence is a relationship between a subject and a location in an information resource. Also a subject but common enough to merit a simple way to talk about it.
Some other necessary mechanics but how is that so far?
Thinking the only way to judge complexity is to start enumerating the parts and someone can speak up when the complexity barrier is crossed.