meta-taxonomy core

Taxonomy as implemented by Drupal is already an abstraction. However it can benefit from toolkits that add pre-existing taxonomy structures to it according to a user's requirements.

This core is intended to work in conjunction with taxonomy but concerns it's self with taxonomy structure instead of taxonomy function. Although it is not the purpose of this project to develop structures so much as allow the user to, instances of difference in structure are useful to express as examples:

Monoglossic vocabulary: A concept introduced within the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin. This is a set of language that is institutional and fixed. It brings social organization and standardization but limits the magnitude of outside influence. Taxonomy of this type may be preset by single authorities, and through peer review systems of concerned dislocated experts.

Heteroglossic taxonomy: Another Bakhtin concept, this set of language is social and flexible. It is established, altered, and contested in textual culture and arts, and within free-floating social settings that the philosopher calls Carnivals. This language would need to be contestable. To an extent, Web 2.0 taxonomy often looks like this in the sense that the more commonly "tagged" terms gain notability, however there could also be options to devalue "tags", establish relationships, alter relationships, and destroy relationships between them. A taxonomy is useful for expressing the great number of cultural goods on the internet if the user has an active relationship with it beyond what current tagging does, "voting on word definitions" and "observing democratic results". In the future there will be dialogic taxonomy browsers where a user could keep their own specialized viewpoint in spite of entering into a field that consists of a democratically established vocabulary. This position of the individual within a taxonomy is important for the modification of culture.

Binaries: These are very basic taxonomic structures that are more likely to heteroglossic in nature as they are often going to be assigned to cultural artifacts. Binaries are useful structures to contrast artifacts by, but are also in of themselves usefully contested in deconstructionist arguments. An example is the gender binary which expresses differences between genders and thus provides useful viewpoints. Deconstruction will enter into that gender binary arguments and point to the useful examples of the in-between spaces created by acts like cross-dressing, reassignment of gender marked signifiers, hermaphroditism, and transgenderism. In this regard even the deconstructed artifacts are related to a binary but present an even more diverse taxonomy.

However I am anticipating new structures (or post-structures) that are as of yet inexpressed and would not want to exclude them. Therefore the tool is best defined as a place for creating "design patterns" for taxonomic structure for a website.

Mentors:

* Alex UA - will help with creating templates.
* randommentor1 - backup mentor, will help with coding standards, etc.
* ALocalMentor - a local mentor, who lives/works near the student and who will meet with the student in person at least two times over the course of the Summer of Code.

Difficulty: medium