The form of "my" interview with Srinija Srinivasan derived in large
part from the fact that it took place both over plain old telephone
and via email. The text indicated with the left brackets was my best
attempt at taking accurate notes during our phone converstation on
January 16th, 1997. I emailed my notes to Srinija, who appended to them for clarification and at times accuracy. She emailed them back
to me on Fri, 24 Jan 1997 (the unmarked text.)
Brett Stalbaum.

> "We have a team of 'Surfers' or 'Catalogers'. We call them our surfing
> division . They are the basis of our idiosyncratic, or creative
> editorial process.  Any categorization of material as vast as what is on
> the internet will contain inevitable contradictions. What we strive for
> a balance between editorial quality and a sense of fairness."

i don't know about "inevitable contradictions" - i guess the idea i wanted
to convey is that we recognize we're carving out the world in our own
particular way - in a way that we hope is as useful and intuitive as
possible for the user to navigate.  inevitably there will be disputes or
controversies - but we strive to embark on this inherently editorial
process of classification in as un-editorial, or neutral a way as
possible. 

> "Several thousand sites are submitted to Yahoo! daily. The surfers spend
> most of their time cataloging and looking at submissions. the rest of
> the time they proactively search the net looking for new things."

and i'd also add that in addition to adding new sites to yahoo - making
yahoo bigger - a significant part of a surfer's day is spent revisiting
existing areas in yahoo, reorganizing/updating/further subcategorizing as
necessary to keep the existing hierarchy as up-to-date and easy to
navigate as possible - making yahoo better. 

> "The categories tend to emerge from the grass roots of the net. What
> Yahoo! can provide that robotic search engines can not is subjective
> relevancy. The surfers are human filters"

yup...

> "Using the metaphor of a book, we like to think of Yahoo as a table of
> contents for the internet, whereas the robotic search engines serve as
> an index at the back of the book."

right - for most broad queries, yahoo provides an effective
subject-oriented organization of what's on the net, much like a table of
contents.  automated search engines are more like back-of-book indexes -
good for very specific, needle-in-a-haystack types of queries. 

> "Part of the process of categorization involves using the
> self-definition of whoever submits the page in remaining unbiased."

right - to the extent possible, we'd like to avoid inflicting our own
biases and views in our categorization; instead, we aim to represent sites
the way they represent themselves.  self-definition is an important aspect
of our classification process. 

> "Yahoo did not set out to have the kind of ontological power that it now
> has."
> 
> "I try to give the surfers an awareness of the kind of power that they
> have."

i guess what i meant is that our primary goal is not to be a definitive
source of information akin to a dictionary or encyclopedia - in other
words, our categories are not intended to authoritatively "define" what
does or doesn't belong in a particular domain.  instead, our primary goal
is to provide intuitive access to interesting information, and that means
grouping information by pools of relevance.  in most cases, both of these
goals would result in the same categorization decisions.  but the
controversial cases usually involve teasing apart these two ideas --
sometimes it's widely disputed whether one group of information is "part
of" another group, but it's rarely disputed whether the two groups are
"relevant" to one another. 

the surfers and i are deeply aware of the broader implications and
ramifications of our classification decisions - we're making subjective
statements about how the world is structured and users will often perceive
our categories as somehow "definitive."  we need to be sensitive to this
and not abuse that power - that means remaining as inclusive and objective
as possible, as opposed to reflecting our own opinions or revealing our
personal perspectives. 

> "The politics of classification is not to be underestimated."

yes.

> "The category of useless is a tribute to new possibilities and novel
> entertainment."

yes.

> Q: Can you describe a model outside the digital realm that best
> describes what you do?
> A: "There are aspects of what we do that are like being a librarian, yet
> it also involves editorial skills, journalistic ethics, and a sense of
> audience."

yes.

hope that wasn't more than you bargained for...

-srinija