tagging

Related Miscellany, Why Do You Mock Me So?

leelefever — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:24:25 +0000

As many of you know, the Common Craft site has gone through a major transition. It was migrated from Moveable Type to Drupal and received a nice new design. One of the outcomes of this has been a complete disruption of 3+ years of blog post categorization.

For years I used a tight set of 6 categories, like:

Weblogs in Business
RSS and Syndication
Social Design

These aren't too bad, but still quite broad. Then I had a catch-all category called "Related Miscellany", to which 250+ post were attached.

The problem is that I'm using tags on the new site, and tag clouds for navigation. This means that all of the former categories turn into giant words in the tag cloud. You can imagine the appeal and inherent usefulness of a giant "Related Miscellany" tag in the cloud. It doesn't exactly highlight any ontological skill.

So, I must fix this situation and the only way to do so is to edit every post, remove old categories and add new, more relevant ones. I recently finished editing all 250+ posts in the "Related Miscellany" category and it's safe to say that I'd rather shave my neck with a cheese grader than have to repeat this process. Only 500+ to go!

Related Miscellany, Why Do You Mock Me So?

leelefever — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:24:25 +0000

For years I used a tight set of 6 categories, like:

Weblogs in Business
RSS and Syndication
Social Design

These aren't too bad, but still quite broad. Then I had a catch-all category called "Related Miscellany", to which 250+ post were attached.

Related Miscellany, Why Do You Mock Me So?

leelefever — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:24:25 +0000

For years I used a tight set of 6 categories, like:

Weblogs in Business
RSS and Syndication
Social Design

These aren't too bad, but still quite broad. Then I had a catch-all category called "Related Miscellany", to which 250+ post were attached.

Related Miscellany, Why Do You Mock Me So?

leelefever — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:24:25 +0000

For years I used a tight set of 6 categories, like:

Weblogs in Business
RSS and Syndication
Social Design

These aren't too bad, but still quite broad. Then I had a catch-all category called "Related Miscellany", to which 250+ post were attached.

Tagging Katrina

leelefever — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:00:53 +0000

Last week I participated in a Seattle Blogwalk (which I haven't yet written about- but soon!) one of the questions we asked was who had blogged about Hurricane Katrina. I raised my hand and talked about using my personal blog to let people know that our friend David Stitcher made it out of the city. I wondered at the time if there was any chance that someone who knows Dave, besides a regular reader, would be able to find that post.

Since, I've been following some of what Nancy White, Alexandra Samuel and many others are doing around building awareness, volunteerism and community participation in the aftermath of the devastation.

When it comes to testing the online tools we talk about so much, few things can compare to how they are used in these types of situations. Like people and agencies, they get tested.

I was interested to see that Alexandra has provided a guide for how people can use tags to increase the discoverability of vital information through tagging-- related to Katrina.

With the Katrina tagging guide, she is lowering the barriers to understanding how people can participate in the recovery online, in plain English. She even includes code that can be used for the Technorati tags.

In the face of this disaster, I hope that the blog world can collectively play some part in the recovery by increasing access to vital information. I applaud the community that has risen to the challenge.

Is it a Tag Cloud? Weighted List? Zeitgeist?