A disucussion on tags / categories.

[Martin]

Hi.
I thought I'd share my personal confusion with you all and see if some answers popped up along the way. I'd really like to hear what you all have to say about the respective merits and flaws of the Tag system and the Category system.

I started using tags a while back instead of categories seeing how I could then apply exactly the "categorization" I wanted to each and every entry. However I find that I've wound up with a large percentage of 'leaf' tags. That is to say tags that are really only related to one entry. The way I understand it a leaf tag pretty much makes itself useless, doesn't it? There's really no point in tagging entries if each and every entry has it's own unique tag is there? (I'm asking. There might be something I've missed.)

If the above is correct, and the Tag system is one that should be used sparingly so as to fit entries into appropriate tags associated woth other entires, what then is the merits of tagging entries rather than using categories? The way I understand it you can now assign multiple categories to an entry, so I'm seeing some very similar uses here.

Is the only difference betwenn 'tagging' and 'categorizing' that you can do the former on the fly while the latter must be managed separately or is there other differences of which I am unaware?

Thank you.

-m

[garvinhicking]

One advantage of tagging is that you can do easy tag interjections and finding entries that are related to each other, but not strongly like they would in categories.

Usually it's also easier to add multiple tags to an entry than to put an entry into various categories.

Having said this, I personally don't use tags and favour strict categories as my personal guideline to think about what I write and offer the reader a quick overview of what my topics are.

Regards,
Garvin