No matter what forum you've dropped into over the last several months, you couldn't have helped but hear the buzz about the Regional reorganization. The flurry of activity in Regional has been exciting, but the fun is not over yet, as there is still more to be done. This month's Feature looks at our goals, our major milestones, and what is on the horizon for the Regional branch.

The Regional Goals

The number of web sites targeted to a local community continues to grow exponentially, as does the number of Web users looking for local information. The Regional category is our place to categorize and describe local web content so that we can create the largest and most useable human-edited directory of local and regional web sites. Accomplishing this task requires a standardized, stable taxonomy where information is categorized similarly across geographic areas. This improves editing, and makes end-user browsing easier. 

We've Accomplished Some Major Milestones

Kudos go out to all members of the Regional community for getting the reorg off the ground! Thanks a million to everyone participating in this project. We have made some significant enhancements to the taxonomy in last few months. Our most significant milestone is the Regional Editorial Guidelines. These are akin to the ODP Guidelines, which we all know and love, but are specific to editing in the Regional branch. The Regional Guidelines will be routinely  updated as we continue with the reorganization. 

So far, the top three levels of the taxonomy have been reorganized according to the guidelines. Work is continuing to organize deeper levels, particularly within the locality and state/province/etc. level. The top level offers three different ways to browse for local web sites: 

  • By world region
  • By choosing the country from an alpha-bar
  • By browsing through a list of all countries and nations
The second level offers standardized lists of countries and nations in each region as well as standardized topical subcategories. No matter what country or region you are browsing, you will find similar taxonomies. Users will have an easier time browsing for local information under taxonomies that are standard among geographic areas. 

What's on the Horizon

Now for the burning question: What's next? There are three basic initiatives that need to take place to complete the reorganization:

1. Complete phase I - Apply the Regional Guidelines to all levels of the existing Regional taxonomy, especially at the third level and below.
2. Begin phase II - Move regionalized categories in the main topical areas of the ODP over to Regional.
3. Examine Regional structure of the Adult and World categories and propose organization plans.

A lot of folks are anxiously awaiting the verdict about categories getting shifted into Regional from other parts of the directory. Staff have looked at each main ODP category and filtered out regionally subdivided categories. Each category has been examined, and recommendations about their placement in the directory have been determined.  Staff will be posting these in the subject forums for comment over first few weeks in April. Here some basic points to keep in mind about this phase of the reorganization:

  • The Regional category is for regional and local content covering all subject areas. The goal is to create the largest and most useable human-edited directory of regional and local sites.
  • The goal of phase II is to gather as much locally organized content into one area as possible, so our goal can be realized.
  • Editors can list a regional/local site more than once in the directory if necessary: once in Regional, and once in a main topical category.  However, local sites in a main topical category should be organized by some method other than regional.
  • @links and related categories will be used extensively and consistently between Regional and the main subject categories to enhance the user experience.
As a community, we've done a great job in improving the Regional category. We still can do a lot more to make to make the Regional category the envy of all other local web portals, especially at the locality level. If you are interested in editing sites for your hometown, favorite city, vacation spot, or any other locality, please apply for a Regional category, and join a great editorial team!