Comments on: Effective Content Reuse: Storing Paragraphs, Not Topics, Is Key to Content Management Success http://thecontentwrangler.com/2008/10/17/effective_content_reuse_storing_paragraphs_not_topics_is_key_to_content_man/ Content is a business asset worthy of being managed Fri, 18 May 2012 01:51:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Paul Trotter http://thecontentwrangler.com/2008/10/17/effective_content_reuse_storing_paragraphs_not_topics_is_key_to_content_man/comment-page-1/#comment-401 Paul Trotter Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:20:02 +0000 http://localhost:8888/ee/?p=310#comment-401 <p>Hi David, </p> <p> The on-the-fly comparison and suggestion is actually the magic in the technology and is the subject of a patent. I would be happy to show you it working in practice and you can certainly read about it on our website <a href="http://www.author-it.com/index.php?page=xtendauthoringmemory" rel="nofollow">http://www.author-it.com/index.php?page=xtendauthoringmemory</a> and get an idea of the visuals. </p> <p> Typically the response time for suggestions is sub-second so it is certainly fast enough to be effective. Our current research shows a 20-30% reduction in authoring time through the ability to reuse existing content quickly and easily. </p> <p> As far as identification of paragraphs, this is probably the easiest part. Technically speaking it is quite easy to determine where a paragraph or block begins and ends. Identifying a sentence is a much more subjective and difficult problem, which is primarily why we chose to go for paragraphs. </p> <p> Paul </p> Hi David,

The on-the-fly comparison and suggestion is actually the magic in the technology and is the subject of a patent. I would be happy to show you it working in practice and you can certainly read about it on our website http://www.author-it.com/index.php?page=xtendauthoringmemory and get an idea of the visuals.

Typically the response time for suggestions is sub-second so it is certainly fast enough to be effective. Our current research shows a 20-30% reduction in authoring time through the ability to reuse existing content quickly and easily.

As far as identification of paragraphs, this is probably the easiest part. Technically speaking it is quite easy to determine where a paragraph or block begins and ends. Identifying a sentence is a much more subjective and difficult problem, which is primarily why we chose to go for paragraphs.

Paul

]]> By: David Bowen http://thecontentwrangler.com/2008/10/17/effective_content_reuse_storing_paragraphs_not_topics_is_key_to_content_man/comment-page-1/#comment-400 David Bowen Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:36:08 +0000 http://localhost:8888/ee/?p=310#comment-400 <p>Paul: This is a great article, but I’m unclear about how similarities between paragraphs are identified on the fly, literally while the author is typing. I haven’t seen such a system in practice, but it seems unlikely that the CMS would know that a paragraph being created is similar to another already in existence, at least in time for it to result in any kind of improvement in efficiency. How quickly can such as system identify similarities in paragraphs? </p> <p> Another issue: from a writer’s standpoint, there isn’t a commonly understood approach for chunking content into paragraphs. In fact, I’m not sure there can ever be, because different writers have different compositional styles, and different types of content require different approaches to chunking content. I’m not sure it’s even possible to create an easy set of rules for breaking content into paragraphs (see Strunk and White to see the complexity of the problem). This would affect the usefulness of this approach, since it could lead to contextual confusion, where mismatched paragraphs end up being sown together. Paragraphs need to flow together and connect in a logical and artful way, but if there aren’t rules for beginning and ending paragraphs, how is that possible? </p> Paul: This is a great article, but I’m unclear about how similarities between paragraphs are identified on the fly, literally while the author is typing. I haven’t seen such a system in practice, but it seems unlikely that the CMS would know that a paragraph being created is similar to another already in existence, at least in time for it to result in any kind of improvement in efficiency. How quickly can such as system identify similarities in paragraphs?

Another issue: from a writer’s standpoint, there isn’t a commonly understood approach for chunking content into paragraphs. In fact, I’m not sure there can ever be, because different writers have different compositional styles, and different types of content require different approaches to chunking content. I’m not sure it’s even possible to create an easy set of rules for breaking content into paragraphs (see Strunk and White to see the complexity of the problem). This would affect the usefulness of this approach, since it could lead to contextual confusion, where mismatched paragraphs end up being sown together. Paragraphs need to flow together and connect in a logical and artful way, but if there aren’t rules for beginning and ending paragraphs, how is that possible?

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