tag right

I’ve learned that there are a couple of rules for doing tags well in blogging. The purpose of tagging is to naturally group things together over time. Patterns may emerge, cross talk, or just juxtaposition.

Using fewer tags is better because more related things will accumulate in those tags. So, keep the list of tags small, approximately 100 in total, plus or minus 50. A consistent vocabulary is better, rather than having lots of tags that only refer to one thing.

Apply a few tags to each item. No more than five, and [P]robably more than one. Five is a good soft target upper limit. If a post wants more than five tags, check that a) the dimension (below) aren’t getting overloaded, and b) that all the tags are earned and doing work. It’s okay to go over the limit if the tags are doing real work.

A complication is that there are a few different dimensions that are needed for effective covering the bases. I’ve heard this called “faceted tagging.” It is not at all necessary to fill all facets; many only apply in specific situations.

Expanding a bit more on each of these that can be confusing:

• TYPE is descriptive of the contents of the post. It can be about what I wrote, or if it’s a linkpost then the tag may apply also to the destination source.
• QUALITY is intended to track what the post or source does, and it’s intended to reflect feelings or attitudes.
• DISTRIBUTION can also be used for series, like #series-butano.

Stick to some basic rules: decide always to use singular or plural; always-hyphenate-words; lower case generally except for proper nouns where it matters; one term per concept, which means usually being reductive or going for the broadest choice.

Anneal your tags. I mean fix errors when you notice them later. Normalize them to keep moving toward that smallest useful set of tags.

Finally, tags are not notes. Don’t use them to store descriptions or thoughts or reminders. They are too short for that, it won’t work.

jg