Taxonomy: Properly Categorizing the Types of Martial Arts

[BFGalbraith]

We can't keep repeating that example with different martial arts, as there will be too much disagreement. Yes, I'm vouching for my specific art. But it's not just that. I'm sure that there are plenty of grappling arts that some would say are the ultimate self defense and others would say provide less self defense. We'd need a seperate discussion for every art.

That's a good point actually. This reminds me of something I wanted to mention about the 1-to-10 scale on the school reviews:

1 through 10, (or one to four stars, or whatever the scale) needs to have the ratings defined. For example, let's say we had a scale of one to four stars for each element, and we take the "aliveness" element for example:

One Star = no sparring of any kind, contact is never made with other students
Two Stars = training involves some resistance, has some kind of limited contact sparring
Three Stars = training always involves resistance, students regularly engage in full contact sparring
Four Stars = Students are expected to compete regularly in full contact competition

Becauses a 10-star version would be a lot of work to develop and maintain, perhaps a one-to-four stars rating for each of the elements would be better than the 1 to 10 in the Capoiera example or like what we see with the school reviews.

[Uri Shatil]

See, but here we have another problem. I'm gonna talk about what I know best, and I think would make a good example - ninjutsu. There are plenty of schools that don't ever spar. They'd be rated one. My school would score a two, maybe three (we do some full contact sparring). and with a 25-50% margin of error, it kind of invalidates the entire system. And we could go on to explain, "Oh, yes, although there is not real sparring, the roda de capoeira could be considered sparring" or "although grappling in Brazillian Jiu-Jutsu is limited by certain rules" blah blah blah. But that invalidates the system, constantly having to explain.

Now here's an idea. Instead of having a rating under each category, let's have some comments under each category. Let me redo the classic "capoeria example" under my theory:

Capoeira primarily a demonstration style
The following descriptions are my opinion about the relevence concerning overlap into other classifications.


Sportfighting:
(Intended for competitive athletic events.)
While there are capoeira competitions, they are not based on limitless fighting, but rather one's skills in a specific skillset. They are more athletic competitions than fighting competitions.

Self Defense:
(Intended for modern-day "real world" fighting, civilian or military)
Capoeira is not intended or created for self-defense. However, it can be used to fight, and will probably work against an unskilled and/or smaller opponent.

Historical:
(Traditions from non-modern-day settings, which would probably fall under one of the other four categories in their native setting.)
Capoeira is rooted deeply in Brazillian culture and tradition. Capoeiraistas used to be among the most feared people in Brazil, but now there are much more affective methods of fighting.

Demonstration:
(Intended for aesthetic display)
The roda de capoeira is a demonstration of one's skill in capoeira. The game that the art is built around is intended for an aesthetic display.

Health and Fitness:
(Intended for mental/physical conditioning and relaxation)
Capoeira in American culture is largly done for health and cardiovascular conditioning, much like cardio kickboxing.



Again, in this specific example, I'm tossing around quite a bit of bullshit because I don't know much about capoeira. But it's just an example. Things need to be less linear, more flexible. Different people train in arts differently, and for different reasons. Some people do judo as a martial art, and others do it as a sport. Some do it as both. How are you going to put that on a one-to-ten scale?

[kwoww]

It's like a dojo review, except it's a style review instead. It could be the same format, actually, just with different categories.

[Lv1Sierpinski]

But then you have the problem of the wide variety of different ways to do the same style...TKD with point sparring, TKD with full contact sparring, TKD with 'full contact but really it's not quite as full as others is'...and so on

[Cullion]

Tree or n-dimensional matrix like classification systems won't work so well here.

We need a tag-cloud representing a freely associated network.

Kyokushin is both traditional and full contact sport.

People can propose new tags and they get voted on somehow.

Where it's contentious that an art fits some tag we have a debate where evidence is presented (as I envision having to do, and being able to make my case for, Tai Chi _in a small subset of schools_ being practiced as a physically demanding, and having success in full contact competition).

So we get a bunch of starter tags like 'grappling competition' and 'full contact striking competition', 'taught to uniformed personnel as a combative', 'documented history over 100 years', 'Asian Origin', 'European Origin' etc.. and then we get a list of styles and start linking them up arbitrarily.

Tags themselves can have sub-tags (like Asia splitting into 'China', 'Phillipines' and 'Korea').

[Cullion]

We only allow BB club members to do this otherwise the voting and the debates will last forever and trolls/delusional MAP crybabies will **** it up.

[chayok]

I think what could work, more of a fun experience then anything is a questionaire...
It's up to you mods to calculate smart advice based on the answers...

Example questions would be.

1. Check what appeals to you.

a. full contact spar during practice
b. occasional bruises
c. no contact, only fitness
d. history lesson
e. learning philosphy of eastern shaolin monks
f. frequent facial striking
g. demonstational routines

and then when person hits submit, you calculate and then a message... "congratulations, you might like capoeira"

[Uri Shatil]

I think what could work, more of a fun experience then anything is a questionaire...
It's up to you mods to calculate smart advice based on the answers...

Example questions would be.

1. Check what appeals to you.

a. full contact spar during practice
b. occasional bruises
c. no contact, only fitness
d. history lesson
e. learning philosphy of eastern shaolin monks
f. frequent facial striking
g. demonstational routines

and then when person hits submit, you calculate and then a message... "congratulations, you might like capoeira"

People have to take other things into consideration. We're not trying to tell people what art they're looking for. Let's return to the earlier example of a soccer mom who has a TKD school that she's looking into. How will a questionare help her? I don't think a questionare is really what we're looking for. We're basically looking for part of bullshido.org that's targeted towards beginners, or even a wiki within bullshido.org (beginner.bullshido.org, is what I mean) targeted towards beginners.