Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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simple, effective ways to categorize

Author:	Jon Udell
Posted:	9/9/1999; 6:24:18 PM
Topic:	rss channels via email
Msg #:	10847 (In response to 10836)
Prev/Next:	10846 / 10848

> His headlines start out with "Talk | ..." or "Review | ...".

Yes, I guess I do that kind of thing automatically in many contexts. For the same reason that I automatically rewrite reply titles, so you get to read "simple, effective ways to categorize" when scanning the headlines at discuss.userland.com, instead of "re: Categories + type of content."

These are just little habits, but they add up to a big effect in layered information systems. In traditional writing and journalism fields, the power of the headline is well-understood. It is less well-understood in cyberspace.

Here's another example: HTML doctitles -- that is, the stuff between in web pages. These things are an incredible resource, both user-visible and -- crucially -- returned by all search engines. A little attention to fielding and categorization with doctitles pays off *huge* dividends in a number of different ways. For example, a controlled doctitle namespace lets you do a wonderful job of categorizing search results coming out of *any* search engine. This is something almost nobody pays attention to, though.

Jon Udell <http://udell.roninhouse.com/>

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