{"id":2557,"date":"2004-09-02T19:46:45","date_gmt":"2004-09-02T23:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/09\/02\/categorically-speaking\/"},"modified":"2004-09-02T19:46:45","modified_gmt":"2004-09-02T23:46:45","slug":"categorically-speaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/09\/02\/categorically-speaking\/","title":{"rendered":"Categorically Speaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

Categories are one of the features of blogging
\n which hold the most promise for expanding the utility and range of application
\n of blogs, especially in the area of information management. Ambitious
\n bloggers like Dave Winer<\/a> and Shimon
\n Rura<\/a> have created elaborate and ingenious
\n taxonomies to organize and cross reference their postings, and emerging
\n applications of RSS feeds allow readers to subscribe to specific categories,
\n or even make category feeds from one blog automatically load into a predetermined
\n text box or column in another blog. By allowing postings to be cataloged
\n into multiple categories along different axes, and by allowing sharing
\n of category feeds among blogs which have similar categories, a much more
\n three-dimensional information tree is possible, revealing connections
\n heretofore difficult to appreciate or note.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, as an organizationally challenged individual,
\n the Dowbrigade rarely uses the vestigial categories we set up during the
\n early days of the Dowbrigade News. The cruel irony of this kind of feature
\n is that those who need its benefits the most are the least likely to use
\n them, at least until they become so transparently intuitive and easy
\n to use that it is almost harder to NOT use them than to do so.<\/p>\n

The closest scheme to this ideal we have seen so far is
\n the implementation in Dave Winer’s beta Channel
\n Z,<\/a> in which at the moment
\n of posting the blogger can assign multiple categories via many-leveled
\n pull-down menus. Quick, easy and effective.<\/p>\n

However, barring access to the still unreleased Channel
\n Z, we are disinclined to take the time and effort needed to create and
\n remember to use our own detailed personal taxonomy of categories, we
\n have been thinking of trying a dumbed down version involving a grand total
\n of two categories.<\/p>\n

Our motivation is renewed "constructive criticism" that
\n the Dowbrigade News lacks focus. An even passing acquaintance with this
\n site will confirm that we are guilty as charged.  Keen political
\n analysis is mixed willy-nilly with stupid pet stories, anecdotal tales
\n of teaching English to speakers of other languages, frustrated sports punditry,
\n weird and disquieting photos, Andean legends and the occasional embarrassing
\n personal revelation.<\/p>\n

On one hand, we understand those readers who find some
\n of the more idiosyncratic posts distracting. Since the political season
\n hit its stride, and especially since we were invited to blog the Democratic
\n convention from the inside, the Dowbrigade has picked up a lot of new readers
\n who are apparently interested in or amused by our political dementia.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, as we have written in the past, all
\n politics all the time makes for a deadly distortion of anyone’s world view.
\n As the unedited voice of an individual, a blog needs to reflect the
\n multi-dimensional reality of the author, and in our opinion needs a healthy
\n variety of interests and subject matter. Our very first statement of purpose
\n was that if we could make our readers think once and laugh once every
\n day, our blog would be a success.<\/p>\n

However, it seems to be possible, within the present technical
\n abilities of the tool we are using (Manila), to present various editions<\/i>
\n of our Blog. For example, suppose we created two categories: Politics and
\n Oddball. At the top of our header we could prominently feature two formatting
\n buttons – Read the Political Version, and Read the Oddball Version.<\/p>\n

Clicking the "Read the Political Version" button would
\n reload the blog, with just the items which have been assigned to the Politics
\n category.  Clicking the "Read the Oddball Version" would reload the
\n blog WITHOUT any of the politics postings. That way, those interested only
\n in one aspect of our work could peruse the subject material they are interested
\n in, and a chronologically longer list of those postings would be accessible
\n as they would replace the removed stories up to the story capacity of the
\n Manila layout we use.<\/p>\n

The default view would still be the full, integrated version,
\n with all of the stories arrayed in standard reverse chrono order.<\/p>\n

One of the items we put at the top of our "Blogging Wish
\n List" at a previous Thursday
\n Night <\/a>discussion of what we would want to
\n tell developers creating the next generation of blogging tools was the
\n ability to offer different versions of our blog to different readers with
\n different interests, bandwidths, learning styles or aesthetic tastes.  This
\n crude and gross application of categorization to filter out certain stories
\n at the click of a mouse button could be a first step in that direction.  If
\n there is time at tonight’s meeting, we plan to ask those who know if such
\n a thing is technically possible.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Categories are one of the features of blogging which hold the most promise for expanding the utility and range of application of blogs, especially in the area of information management. Ambitious bloggers like Dave Winer and Shimon Rura have created … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}