"Tags" are creator-defined, and are there for -- well, honestly, I'm not entirely sure *what* they're for, because LJ has never leveraged them well.
Tags are for publication (signalling content) or for indexing. This tends to vary from user to user and occasionally from entry to entry. I'm an indexer; almost all of my tags are so I can find things later, and if they're informative to others, well, nice bonus but that's mostly not why I do it. My tag sets are crafted to work around limitations in LJ's implementation (which offends my inner purist, but the inner purist is tamed by an outer pragmatist). I think it's because I'm an indexer that the lack of boolean expression grates so much. Anyway, some of the people I read clearly use tags to signal content; whether they also use them for indexing I couldn't say.
My indexing is primarily for me, but I'm mindful of the fact that other people might click on those tag links too. All I can promise, though, is that my "foo" entries will all be of a kind. They will probably not have much in common with your "foo" entries, as we've discussed. And some of them should never be combined in that way; my "my family" tag is categorically different from your "my family" tag. I would never submit such a tag to del.icio.us, but these aren't del.icio.us tags; they have a context (my journal). (Heh. You think of tags as contexts, and that's true too, but tags also have contexts.)
"Memories" are defined by readers, for lookup by those readers.
Sometimes. Look around; there are different uses out there. Some people record only their own entries in "memories"; this was especially useful before LJ implemented tags. Other people save only other people's entries in their memories, using other means to look up their own entries. Other people use a hybrid approach. I haven't kept it up, but I have one memory category for what I think of as my most significant posts (on anything), and almost all of those are cross-entered into some other category too. It seemed like an interesting idea several years ago but, as I said, I haven't been dilligent or consistent about it.
If I could put my own private tags on others' entries, I might not need memories at all. (Note that I don't mean "if I could tag others' entries"; that feature exists, but it's not what I mean. I think a journal's tag set has to make sense in the context of that journal; how I would tag your entry for my use is different from how either of us would tag it for use with your journal.)
"Interests" are more like a del.icio.us tag cloud model, where the semantics are collectively defined.
Good point. I hadn't thought about interests, but you're right -- just another (common, not local) tag.
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part 2
Date: 2008-07-04 02:08 am (UTC)Tags are for publication (signalling content) or for indexing. This tends to vary from user to user and occasionally from entry to entry. I'm an indexer; almost all of my tags are so I can find things later, and if they're informative to others, well, nice bonus but that's mostly not why I do it. My tag sets are crafted to work around limitations in LJ's implementation (which offends my inner purist, but the inner purist is tamed by an outer pragmatist). I think it's because I'm an indexer that the lack of boolean expression grates so much. Anyway, some of the people I read clearly use tags to signal content; whether they also use them for indexing I couldn't say.
My indexing is primarily for me, but I'm mindful of the fact that other people might click on those tag links too. All I can promise, though, is that my "foo" entries will all be of a kind. They will probably not have much in common with your "foo" entries, as we've discussed. And some of them should never be combined in that way; my "my family" tag is categorically different from your "my family" tag. I would never submit such a tag to del.icio.us, but these aren't del.icio.us tags; they have a context (my journal). (Heh. You think of tags as contexts, and that's true too, but tags also have contexts.)
"Memories" are defined by readers, for lookup by those readers.
Sometimes. Look around; there are different uses out there. Some people record only their own entries in "memories"; this was especially useful before LJ implemented tags. Other people save only other people's entries in their memories, using other means to look up their own entries. Other people use a hybrid approach. I haven't kept it up, but I have one memory category for what I think of as my most significant posts (on anything), and almost all of those are cross-entered into some other category too. It seemed like an interesting idea several years ago but, as I said, I haven't been dilligent or consistent about it.
If I could put my own private tags on others' entries, I might not need memories at all. (Note that I don't mean "if I could tag others' entries"; that feature exists, but it's not what I mean. I think a journal's tag set has to make sense in the context of that journal; how I would tag your entry for my use is different from how either of us would tag it for use with your journal.)
"Interests" are more like a del.icio.us tag cloud model, where the semantics are collectively defined.
Good point. I hadn't thought about interests, but you're right -- just another (common, not local) tag.