[wp-hackers] lots of category items

[Haluk Karamete]

Let's say this is my cat tree. Though I separated them visually in this
email, they all belong in to the same (built in category) taxonomy.

-----------------------------
media
-----------------------------
-->video         example url for this is: mysite.com/category/media/video
-->audio
-->text
-->photo
-->whatever

-----------------------------
collections
-----------------------------
-->tutorials   example url for this is:
mysite.com/category/collections/tutorials/
-->interviews
-->debates
-->whatever

-----------------------------
audience
-----------------------------
-->beginner  example url for this is: mysite.com/category/audience/beginner
-->intermediate
-->advanced

-----------------------------
topics
-----------------------------

-->culture
------>art
------>food
------>music
------>etc

-->science
------>astronomy
------>computing
------>chemisty
------>etc

-->sports
------>soccer
------>basketball
------>tennis
------>etc

-->feature
------>main headline
------>worth a look
------>must see
------>flagship
------>etc

With that in mind, here is the question.

Because all this data is implemented within the same category taxonomy
system, the corresponding drop down ( the category dropdown that is )
getting extremely inconvenient to work with. This makes the new content
entry process uneffective and not fun at the admin dashboard.

An alternative to this is to use custom taxonomies. I could create 4-5
custom taxonomies such as media, topics, audience, collections, and
feature. As a result of this. I could get 5 or 6 different islands (
dropboxes ) that are each easy to get to. The problem with that would
manifest itself when I run queries that are tapping into those multiple
taxonomies.

Since I expect high traffic and lots of landing pages with a ton of loops,
I do not want to go that route - just for the sake of getting individual
boxes on the admin screen at content entry time.

I do not want to cross multiple taxonomies when pulling posts.

for example from media, get the videos AND intersect that with from
audience the beginners stuff AND intersect that from collections with the
tutorials that are featured as must see... that's too much! isn't it?

When they all belonged in the same cat system, the query gets much
faster/efficient. True?

If so, then what's the solution?

Well, I should be able to break that 100+ item category tree into multiple
boxes that appears to the content entry person as if they were custom
taxonomies but in reality they are not.

How do I achieve that?

some filter? some plug in? how do you go about it?