Michael’s prompted this post, through posing a pretty nifty tagging concept.
.. and it is a cool concept. One of the things I decided when I rebuilt this weblog from scratch (deleting the original in the process) was that I wanted to keep categories to a minimum, certainly no more than 10-15 core cat’s and reasonably descriptive at that.
One comment on the above post - suggests using a plugin that creates categories on the fly.. Since Technorati uses Wordpress Categories as a tag, it’s a simple method of creating dynamic tags on the fly.. the idea of having (particularly, long term) hundreds of categories just sounds like applying a 12 pound sledge hammer to tap in a tack.
There is a down side to this concept, however.
With said plugin, you could easily end up with 30, 40 or indeed many many categories, certainly growing as many as one new category for every post. To my mind, categories are nothing more than a relative ‘container’ to ’store’ the posts in..
Technorati has always relied heavily on tags. They should be free form - the bonus of course is if you link to another blog’s post, you can utilise the same Technorati tags they have used, to have your content match up with theirs, sort of a poor man’s XFN style link process..
Perhaps we could look at it this way - tags are free-form, categories should be more structured and act as a container, with Technorati tags as acting as a more free-form descriptive element.
I really like Michael’s idea - it has a really non-invasive XFN kind of feel to it. Going one step further - this thought occurs to me. Lets say for arguments sake, take this post as an example.
I create this post, which sends a track-back to Michael’s post as it’s obviously quite relevant to Michael’s thoughts. Now, I’ve tagged my post with Technorati tags, what if those tags also went through as part of the track-back, and updated Michaels original post tags.
Someone links to my post, and their tags update mine - which means over time as a post, or rather the content or driving thought behind said post makes ‘the rounds’ across multiple blogs, they all have similar tags, effectively increasing Technorati’s ability at showing related content.
Right now, I’m basically manually entering in the same tags Michael has used - sure, that’s a method to exact the concept I speak of, but to have my tags (which may be subtly different, for all manner of reasons) flow through automatically would really create something cool..
Ok, so I know that whole concept would be hard to implement, but it just strikes me as a very cool concept - link to a post, pass on the Technorati tags, blog visitor then checks out the post, the associated Technorati tags and discovers a whole world of related material.. profit.
≡ This is a journal entry relating to the topics of design, function, reference.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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