An ecclectic mix of information on a variety of subjects is difficult to organize and present to the reading public. Somehow a tree-structure just does not seem to cut it. A search box can lead readers to information related to a specific item that is being pursued. However, this allows little latteral flexibility. For some time we considered a magazine structure, with changing content that could be presented on a monthly basis. After all the magazine structure has worked for over a century in the print media. The problem: it artificially ages the material presented, rather the way blogs do today. Blog posts over several months old are heavily discounted by the average reader.
A cloud structure was briefly popular on some websites. However, it is not particularly useful, as it creates some confusion in the minds of information seekers. Moving quickly is a priority, and clouds are made for people lying in the grass making castles in the air, or perhaps getting rained upon. An alphabetic listing, dictionary or encyclopedia style might seem to be called for. It is classic. It is intuitive, and it allows for breadth of scope. Yet after so many articles are presented, it can also seem somewhat cluttered when listed on one page. The alternative of having A,B,C,etc, on a page seems unrevelatory.
We present random article links on many pages. In spite of this, we do not find this method very helpful on its own. In fact the number of internal clicks due to these links is not very high, illustrating their relative non-usefulness. We have a search box on many pages as well. There are directory trees on most of the folio pages. We also often have destination links to related articles from articles. Below, we have a cloudy alpha-listing, that is by no means complete. None of these methods alone provides an adequate method of giving the reader quick access to the breadth and depth of information on InDepthInfo. We only hope that their combination will be useful and that you find the information you need.
