Categorically Speaking

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 elaborate and ingenious
taxonomies to organize and cross reference their postings, and emerging
applications of RSS feeds allow readers to subscribe to specific categories,
or even make category feeds from one blog automatically load into a predetermined
text box or column in another blog. By allowing postings to be cataloged
into multiple categories along different axes, and by allowing sharing
of category feeds among blogs which have similar categories, a much more
three-dimensional information tree is possible, revealing connections
heretofore difficult to appreciate or note.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The default view would still be the full, integrated version,
with all of the stories arrayed in standard reverse chrono order.

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