//beconfused

This is a post I wrote to talk about folders, categories and tagging. I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but my blog isn’t really holding up very well in terms of categorizations and stuff. It is quite apparent that my categories are screwed up.

About folders

It all begins with folders and directories right? It’s the operating system way. It’s so important to store all your documents in a way that you can find it back easily and I don’t mean chunking all of them in your desktop or something.

Folders are probably invented to give people the feeling of their documents kept in a physical location like how they store their newspapers, magazines and tax invoices. When your April edition of Newsweek is in your book self, the same item cannot exist in your bag, the same item cannot be in your mom’s trashbin too.

When you store things like digital photos, haven’t you encounter times when you can’t decide which photo the image should go into?

I can have 3 folders:

* Buildings
* Singapore
* School

And I have 1 picture of my secondary school which is in Singapore. So should I put it in Buildings? Or Singapore? or School? Can’t it be all three?

About categories

So we have categories. That really saved the day. My problem is solved. Now I can assign categories to my picture. I assign it to 3 of the categories. And when I select a category to filter out - for example - Singapore, I can see my beautiful picture as one of the many images that is presented to me.

That is how WordPress does things by the way. It is more intelligent this way. For example, this post can go into Technology and Site related. It’ll make the post much easier to find for you guys.

About tagging (or labels or keywords)

But still, I have a problem. My picture could have been assigned with more categories. My picture is taken in Bukit Batok, in Singapore, and is of a School and that’s a Buildings. It’s taken at Night. My Friends and Teachers are in the picture. We are having Barbecue.

Now, that is a hell lot of categories already. The category structure has a major restriction - it has to be created before something is assigned into it. An analogy would be that you decide to buy 3 copies of Newsweek this time, one is left in your mom’s trashbin, one in your bookshelf and one in your bag. You can easily go to either of these places to fetch your Newsweek. You need to have a bag first before you put your magazine inside. You need your mom’s trashbin to be present first too.

Tagging is just a smarter way of categorizing. Basically, you assign all sorts of keywords you want to your document. My picture with us barbecuing can be assigned - Food, Barbecue, Teachers, Friends, Buildings, Singapore, Night, Bukit Batok and Gathering.

Another picture can be an image of my polytechnic in Dover, taken with my pals in a computer laboratory. That can be tagged with - Dover, Singapore, Polytechnic, Friends, Teachers, Computers, Lesson, Campus and Perl.

In a way, no categories exist. Instead, a lot list of tags are gathered distinctively and displayed in front of you. When you select the tag ‘Friends’, the page is generated and all the pictures containing the tag ‘Friends’ is fetched out and displayed.

Back to the analogy with my Newsweek magazine, it can be tagged with Bag, Mom’s Trashbin and Bookshelf. When I choose to go to the Bag, my Bag is generated so that I can get my Newsweek along with all the items tagged with the keyword Bag.

The advantage is you can assign as many tags as you want without worrying that the categories are no present prior to assigning. It’s easier to manage too.

And WordPress 2.0.2 (latest version) doesn’t support tagging natively. Major Web 2.0 implementation such as Flickr does tagging. It’s fun, non-restrictive and quick. I just hope that more softwares would be implemented in this way. Hopefully WordPress would support it in their next release. It’d be really cool.

Windows Vista, the successor of Windows XP, will allow users to assign keywords to files. It’s a similar to tagging but we really have to see how Microsoft implement it in the end. Keywords are implemented more for search than categorization purposes.

Sorry if the whole post is a total bore to you. I kinda enjoy writing these stuff, hahaa…

Tags: blogging, site related, technology, wordpress