Mandala Knowledge Map Philosophy
Subject and places are built collaboratively, through crowd-sourcing. Ideally, new subjects or places should integrate into the existing
Before Your Meeting
- Take a look at the existing subject and place trees in Mandala.
Expand the various categories. Do you see a place where your terms might fit? Are there existing terms you could use?
- Bring an example of a tree.
Ideally, this data will be in the spreadsheet format described below. However, feel free to use anything that conveys how you want your terms placed, like drawings or diagrams.
Building Subject Trees
Here are some tips for building subject trees:
Make sure your terms can stand alone.
Right
Wrong- Photography
- Color photography
- Grayscale photography
- Photography
- Color
- Yes
- No
- Consider both specific terms (Andean sheep farmers) and general terms (wool). Remember, your terms can really enhance the Mandala project as a whole, and other people may eventually want to use your broader terms.
Places
-Consider whether your places are administrative (ie, the official state of Virginia) or cultural (ie, the Rotunda).
Formating Trees in a Spreadsheet
Trees in Mandala are built with tree data structures. Each knowledge map term is a node on the tree. You can place a knowledge map term using its parent — that is, the higher-level term the knowledge map falls under. If a node doesn’t have a parent — that is, it’s the highest possible level on the tree, we call it the root node. In the example above, for example:
- “Mansion” is the parent of “Large Mansion”
- “Architecture” is the parent of “Building materials” and “Building dimensions”
- Building dimensions is the parent of Building layout, courtyards, and Stories
- Building layout is the parent of courtyard structure, Mansion, and Massive structure
- Building materials is the parent of Mud, Mudbrick, and Stone
To format your tree in a spreadsheet, every row represents a node.
What happens once my tree goes live? Can anyone add a term to my tree?
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How long will it take for the team to add my subjects and places to Mandala?
The timeline will vary. Places may take longer to add than subjects, especially if you need accurate administrative data. In these cases, adding places may take as long as a month. In your meeting, the Knowledge Maps team can give you more accurate time estimates based on your specific needs. Needless to say, you should start the process well in advance.