WikiFolders: Augmenting the Display of Folders

Summary:
Traditional file systems allow the user to see and modify their file hierarchys manually, but it may be difficult to find them, sort them, or remember the relationships between those files. The normal means of editing are very limited and often times do not provide enough information for the user to successfully complete their task. People often use readme files to work around having to remember all the intricacies of a given file system arrangement that they are using. In this article wikifolders was discussed. It is a hybrid system for annotating file systems which builds on the regular file system with the use of wiki like functionality, but takes away the weaknesses of the normal file system. The end view of these wikifolders is similar to a traditional file view with some modifications: the user can see annotations for each file, the icon has added functionality, and the file system has these changes without requiring any wholesale changes in the system. Any current file system can be converted into a wikifolder by the click of a button.

Discussion:
I thought that this was a very interesting paper to read. I know that having a more descriptive file system would definitely help me more with my every day functioning on the computer. I would like to see more research go into a better way to display files as well as more flexibility with the icons.