SharePoint 2010 allows metadata inheritance through folders as you mentioned in a dream state. SharePoint views also allow you to remove folders from the view to retain a metadata driven view. Metadata navigation in 2010 also improves upon this.

The “group by” option was never meant to be a folder replacement just another option in a view. It doesn’t meet your criteria for folders, because it was never meant to do so. Also, the problem with (main) problems of folders are inconsistent labels and deep hierarchies. I’m glad the group by view doesn’t go more than 2 levels.

In my opinion we as an IT professional community has failed to not recognise the potential merger of both. It is not a one or the other debate. Current attempts at making them co-exsist range from desperate to hopefull.

We seem to think users do not understand meta-data and then go on about their dicipline (or lack of).
I have also done this untill I realised that users love meta-data, they just have difficulty agreeing on it. The legacy of folders…

…User created folders imply meta-data. The user does not realise it, but he/she is is creating implicit meta data for the documents. The typical file-based collaboration problem then becomes to create alignment on the folder structure. Point is… users have been fighting over meta-data for as long as file servers have been available to them. Pre-dating formal document management etc. They just called it something else.

Tools such as Sharepoint has largely failed to understand the huge resistance to change they will have to overcome when introdicung meta-data driven systems.

Here is my attempt at a solution:

If e.g. Sharepoint could present its meta-data as folders the problem will go away. Lets introduce a conceptuall view called: Folder View (as opposed to Grid View, Normal View, etc.)

The setup for this view would be essentially ordering the metadata in a specific order rendering a view which can be presented as folders. Done deal, everone is happy. Ofcourse they would not be able to create ad-hoc folders anymore, but they will not care if all the meta-data is there. Adding meta-data is easy and the problem is well solved in Sharepoint.

The following advantages now become evident:
1) Meta Data (real) is seemlessly used to facilitate traditional click through searching. Your user is completely unaware of the difference.
2) When a user creates a file in a specific folder, all the meta-data for the new document is implied by the parent structure of the folder. This meta-data could automatically be attached to the document, thereby removing the need to populate it. Only the difference will be presented for capture. This is a good thing because meta-data can become very laborius to capture.
3) Obviously, multiple folder views can be created, thereby bringing home the advantage of meta-data to the user. Yah!

The current sharepoint (up to 2007, since I do not know the 2010 spec) comes kinda close with the option of a Group by view. But no cigar and here is why (in order of severity):
1) For reasons beyond my understanding you may only have two levels. Epic Fail.
2) It does not look like folders so users feel uncomfortable. Fail.
3) If you add a documents the advantage as per 2 above is obviously not present. Minor Fail.

All my searches on this topic leads me to threads similar to the one, which is essentially a folder vs meta-data only standoff.

The reality is that the folder paradaigm can never be removed. It is well and truly entrenched. It can however be hijacked by meta-data (as described above).

I would be interested to here this groups thoughts on this?

regards,

CHM

So you can show php/C#/etc. code with colors in your page?