Foreword

Your Content Is Probably Crap.

In 1951, science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon gave a lecture at New York University. During the audience Q&A he responded to a remark that the majority of science fiction is terrible by saying “90 percent of everything is crap.”

Rather than refuting the point being made, he made the claim that science fiction is really no different than any other genre in terms of the prevalence of low-quality examples. This point has become known as Sturgeon’s law or Sturgeon’s revelation.

Before going any further, I have some bad news. Based on Sturgeon’s law, there is
a 90 percent chance that whatever content you are working on is crap.

Here’s the good news. If you are reading this foreword, it means you found this book. Within these pages you will gain the knowledge that you need to make your content a lot less crappy.

When the authors of this book started talking about content modeling at information architecture and user experience conferences, it was like a breath of fresh air. Our community had focused for too long on the classification of content without consideration for the structure of the content itself and the useful relationships between individual pieces of content that were possible by looking past simple hierarchies. Our overly classification-centric view on digital content meant that Sturgeon’s law actually underestimated the amount of crap out there.

My hope is that this book is the first of many steps that our community can take toward improving the way the world creates and consumes digital content. I can’t think of two people better suited to the task than Carrie and Mike. Over the years they have tirelessly educated people in workshops and conference talks about the value that content modeling can provide. I am thrilled that they have finally sat down and put these lessons into a referenceable source.

I can assure you that this book is one of the 10 percent.

—Abby Covert

Author, How to Make Sense of Any Mess