Dave's Whiteboard

Toward the end of a slow week, a cluster of things I haven’t figured out.
(Plenty where those came from.)

Tagging (on a blog)

Alan Levine at CogDogBlog muses about tags versus dog-egories. I haven’t used tags on the Whiteboard — not sure why. Maybe I’ve thought of them as too ad-hoc, though I realize the Taxonomy Police rarely conduct raids.

I may also be a bit analytical. When I started using Quicken, for example, I went back five months with my checking account and credit cards so I could have a full-year record. Even on the blog I write just for my parents, I’ve occasionally gone back and moved posts out of the default “uncategorized” category.

D’Arcy Norman, commenting on Alan’s post, says “I use tags to describe the content, and categories to indicate the ‘type’ of post.” That makes sense, as does his remark that usually he uses the search feature on his blog to find stuff.

Registering to comment

Two or three times a month, I wander to a blog I haven’t read before and find myself wanting to comment. Sometimes I give in to that urge, only to discover — sometimes after writing the comment — that this particular blog requires registration. I don’t mean “enter your name and your email,” which to me isn’t registration. That’s just asking, “who are you?”

What I don’t get is, “if you want to comment on this statement I’ve thrown out to the world, sign up for this site, this group, this portal.” I understand that each person defines ‘blog’ in his own way. It’s your blog; you can do whatever you want.

I myself “belong” to more sites than makes sense. It’s like those paternalistic grocery-store programs where you have to sign up or you’re not allowed to buy stuff at the sale price.

I’m not going to sign up for yet another goofy-named social site or blogger cartel.

(Added twelve hours after the original post)

Ahhh. I just read a post that had elicited several good comments. I liked one of them so much I followed it to the commenter’s blog. Uh-oh, another online community that invites me to join. But the EduGeek Journal, while inviting me in, will let me comment on posts even if I don’t join. (To comment on comments, I have to register. I don’t quite get that, except maybe as an incentive to join, but at least I can take part. ) Good going.

I’ve tried — five months now — but I often feel like I’ve wandering into a presentation at someone else’s convention. Wherever the happy medium is, I haven’t found it. People with lots of followers tweet about wondering why they’re there. People who follow hundreds — are they like the folks who always have the TV on in the background?

They have their own problems; I just wonder about myself. Poor choices in picking whom to follow? Lack of connectedness? Just plain uninterested in what someone bought at the drugstore? Dearth of social skills? I’ve sent 21 updates since March. Over half were sent to individuals, which hints I’m more reactive than proactive. No surprise there, I guess.

Dysfunctional interfaces

My wife and I want to go to the beach again. We usually rent an oceanfront house, and we’ve gone to the same town five or six times. What confuses me now, as it has before: how come, in a field where you’ve got lots of competitors (like vacation rentals), no site gets inspired by good features on competing sites?

For example: the overall best-organized site we check doesn’t let you specify a period long than a week (we’re trying for two). That means having to dig deeper into each property available during week 1. Competing Site 2 does allow multi-week searches, but doesn’t filter for peculiar features that no one in their right mind would look for — like internet access. Competing Site 3, now, has photos of each property — but they’re about 100 pixels wide, with (apparently) no way to enlarge them.

Why make things so difficult for people who are waving credit cards and saying, “Gee, I’d sure like to rent a place. I wonder where I can find one that suits me?”

Tag cloud photo by broken thoughts / Mark Lindner.
Registration desk photo by Toni Malin.
Photo of traffic sign in San Jose, California by Richard Masoner.