Last month on my site I mentioned that I probably wouldn't be using
Habari because of the lack of categories.  Scott stopped by and left a
comment saying if I wanted it, I should speak up.   So I wrote my
reasons why Habari should have categories.

Now, I'm sure half of you are cringing right now.  And I'm sure that
this horse has been beaten to death.  But, hey, Scott asked me... :)

Bottom line is, Habari needs structure, much more than a tag could
ever give, if it's going to offer users a way to go beyond just basic
blogging.

http://misguidedthoughts.com/432/habari-and-structure

here's the post:
 Here's the reason I feel that Habari should be using categories in
addition to tags:

Structure.

Categories, as archaic as some may think they are, are useful in
giving sites a basic structure to build on, to navigate by, and to
design around. And, I believe most importantly, gives users the
ability to extend Habari better than with tags alone.

I've always believed that a content management system should be able
to 'go beyond' it's basic premise. Textpattern is more than a blogging
platform. And Habari can be, too.

But does this jive with the Habari mission statement? The first part
reads:

    Habari represents a fresh start to the idea of blogging. The
system is fast, easy to use, and easy to modify. New users should have
no problem using and enjoying Habari. Advanced users should have no
problem tweaking Habari to do exactly what they need it to do.

So it's a blogging platform with the promise to do exactly what they
want. Going on...

    User-created plugins make Habari do nearly anything imaginable,
and a robust theme system permits the use of several popular
templating solutions.

But in order to do anything I want, Habari needs structure. And tags
aren't structure. Well, they're a basic categorization system. But
tags are very limited.

Let's say I'm going to be writing a series of articles in my blog.
Since it's a specific series, I want the posts to look different. Now
I can probably do that with tags, using conditionals. (If tag="series"
body-background:pink" type stuff in the template or css.) But what
about a landing page? Or maybe I want a list of all the articles in
the series in the sidebar of all posts in the series? Do I make a tag-
series.php.tpl in my theme folder? (I'll admit, I may be able to use a
'page' for the landing page.) And what happens if I have more than one
tag that has conditionals?

With categories, I can assign the post to the 'series' category and
then modify cateogries and single temples. Not perfect, but better.
(Chris Davis is working on a WordPress MU series, and I wonder if
having some sort of structure would help out there. Because it is a
beautiful site, but will it be hard to tell what's part of the
series?)

Going beyond blogs, could you do an online magazine/newspaper with
just tags? No. You need to differentiate sections. Technology from
Food and Wine, April from May, etc. You need structure.

Maybe the answer isn't just categories. Maybe it's the ability to
assign different content types to posts. I don't know the answer, but
something needs to be put in place to go beyond basic blogging.

I like Habari, and I want to see it succeed. I don't want it to sit
stale like a lot of other blogging systems out there. Perhaps this is
where 'forward thinking' comes into play.

Have the ability to be more than just a blogging platform.

That's all I ask.

On Aug 1, 2007, at 12:25, silverwing wrote:

I'm not sure which half that is.

In user interface, I see no reason why we would not want categories.

If, on the back end, a category happens to be implemented as a tag,  
why would a user care? I thought this is what was decided, long, long  
ago - that it would be possible to designate certain tags as  
categories. Or, conversely, when you create a "category", that it  
would merely be implemented as a tag with special properties.

While your long reasoning is very interesting, it's not a reason to  
do it or not do it. The reason to do it is that significant numbers  
of users want and expect it, and they all have their own unique  
reasons for wanting it. And since it's easy to do, I can't imagine  
why we would resist doing it.

By the way, implementing it as tags also makes it very easy to put a  
particular post in multiple categories. Not that that's terribly hard  
otherwise.

--
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that  
you do it.
Mahatma Ghandi

For me, it would be the ability to style certain tags differently.  On
my site, I use both tags and categories, and I have different headers
for each post's category.   (It's one of those little style things I
like doing.)

If a tag can act like a category, great.  But that tag needs to be
treated differently then other tags.  If I was to use the tag "Lost"
as a category, would I be able to use another template for it?  If a
post had two tags that were 'categories' is there a hierarchy in place
to determine which is primary?  And which template to use for that
tag?

Would there be setting in admin that let you set a tag as a category?
(And probably set a weight as to which tag template to use?)

Just some things I have to think about.  (And as you said, Rich,
people expect it.  But some of use are a little more attached to it
than others!)

~silverwing
http://misguidedthoughts.com

On Aug 1, 9:40 am, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote:

On Aug 1, 2007, at 13:06, silverwing wrote:

Well, it's easy enough to say "yes" at this point, since it hasn't  
been implemented yet. ;-) But, yes, this was discussed at some point  
- the ability to style a particular category differently - and that  
implies that there must be some kind of ordering of the categories so  
that we can choose the right style for multi-category postings.

Yes, that seems like a reasonable expectation. Although I imagine  
that the admin interface would instead allow you to create a category  
- that is, I imagine that telling the user that a category is just a  
tag would be rather more confusing than useful. As long as it behaves  
as a category, the implementation details need not be discussed in  
the user interface.

So ... having said all that, that doesn't mean that it will have this  
stuff tomorrow, or even that I'm going to be the one implementing it.  
And perhaps there are folks who disagree with me, which is perfectly  
fine, and is a good reason for this functionality to be implemented  
as either an option or a plugin (or, both).

--
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few  
of us left.
Oscar Levant

I'm going to concentrate my reply here.  It might be useful to link your
post to the GoogleGroups archive of this discussion, so that your
readers can see (and participate in) the discussion.

I asked this before, and I'll ask it again: in what way are categories
different from tags?  Discussion and review of this concept is a good
thing; and new voices sharing their opinions helps ensure we're making
reasoned decisions.

Tags and categories are both signifiers for how data is organized.  The
common notion that I've seen repeated is that categories are "buckets"
or containers in some way; and tags are labels or metadata.  That is,
content _goes into_ categories; but tags _go onto_ content.  Is that the
way you see things?

I don't see how categories are functionally any different from tags.
Both describe how content should be organized.  Both provide a means to
say "these two posts are related, in some way, to one another".

Tags _can_ be structure.  You can elect to use specific tags to order
your posts in the same way as you would normally use categories in other
systems.

If controls were in place to provide the functionality you desire, would
you still desire to have "formal" categories?

For example, if there were a simple theme function you could use, like
ul_posts_with_tag('my-uber-series'), that would generate an unordered
list of post titles linked to each post, in order of publication date
(or some other ordering mechanism), would you find using tags sufficient?

I recognize you're making an example, and my counter-example above only
deals with that one specific example.  Obviously you have other criteria
for wanting categories.  I'm trying to find out if it's a specific
_functionality_ issue you seek, or a more conceptual issue at work here.

Reading your post, it sounds to me as though it's specific
implementation issues that have you flummoxed.  If tags could be
designed / documented to provide the functionality you desire, it sounds
as though you'd be satisfied.

In what way are tags "technology" and "food" insufficient in comparison
to categories of the same names?  If you use the tags to group content
together by subject matter, that's exactly what categories do, right?

Tags as currently implemented in Habari are free-form.  That need not be
the case.  A plugin could be made to provide the following functionality:
* a site admin uses some page to add / remove / manage tag words
* authors see a drop-down / checklist menu on the post composition
screen presenting the tags they are allowed to use for the post

In this way, tags are not free form, controlled only by the admin, and
as near as I can tell do exactly the same thing as categories do in
other blogging tools.

Speaking solely for myself, I want to be very careful as we evaluate
that request.  It seems to me that many tools want very much to be more
than "just a blog", and suffer as a result.  Habari was conceived
originally as "just a blog" -- albeit an advanced, highly customizable
one -- and I want to make sure we get that aspect of Habari made right
early on.

I don't want Habari to suffer because we're trying to be all things to
all people; or even a lot of things to a lot of people.

In your follow-up email, you said:

Habari was born from a desire to break from expectation in some ways.
We made the specific decision _not_ to implement RSS feeds, for example.
 Most people expect these.  Just because people expect something doesn't
mean we necessarily need to build it.  Evaluating the functionality
provided by the expectation, and whether there's room for improvement /
innovation is an important aspect of the Habari project.

Thanks for taking the time to express your opinions.  Open discussion of
Habari's feature-set is important.  Community participation will only
improve the quality of the product.  Remember that this post is only my
opinion.  If a majority of Habari developers desire formal categories,
it'll happen.

--
GPG 9CFA4B35 | ski...@skippy.net | http://skippy.net/

On Aug 1, 2007, at 13:15, Scott Merrill wrote:

It appears, for the sake of this conversation, a "category" is a tag  
that has a display template associated with it. I believe it was  
ChrisJDavis who spoke at some length about wishing to divide his  
website into sections/categories using this kind of categorization.

I think that your objections are valid, but that maybe it's just a  
question of what one calls things.

Let's have a feature where a particular tag would have special  
properties. One of these properties could be associating a particular  
style/theme with a tag - if a posting is tagged as "foo" then we use  
the "foo" theme. And if we wish to display http://wooga.drbacchus.com/
tag/foo then we also use the foo theme for that. And if there exists  
themes for foo and bar, then we need to specify an ordering (foo >  
bar) so that the foo theme is used instead of the bar theme for that  
particular posting.

If someone wishes to call these special tags "categories", or  
possibly "jooblies", then so be it. I personally prefer "jooblies"  
because of the lack of baggage associated thereto.

--
"There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the  
glare that obscures."
James Thurber

On 8/1/07, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote:

I think this is exactly the solution that we arrived at the last time
we discussed this; this idea of "supertags" or "magictags" or
"jooblies".

I was under the impression that the intention was to have tag-specific
named versions of each of the single/multiple/etc templates that would
be applied when that thing is called for display.  Although this is
not currently implemented, this would let you apply a custom template
to any tag for display.  That's where I thought we were heading.

If you immediately wanted to have categories in specific, just name
your tags to indicate as much, ala "category_food" or
"category_technology".  A plugin (or core code, assuming there was a
calling for it, although a preliminary implementation would be less
intrusive as a plugin) could allow you to use "category:food" as a tag
internally, while removing the "category" part from any display and
altering the posting interface to require a single "category:*" tag
per post.

The important part is that all of this works within the confines of
the current architecture.  We haven't put limiters on the system by
refusing to code support for categories separate from tags, but if the
tag implementation needs to be augmented to easily support what I
mentioned in the prior paragraph, then that's what we should work on,
assuming there's a calling for it by the userbase.

Owen

On Aug 1, 2:24 pm, "Owen Winkler" <epit...@gmail.com> wrote:

This would be my ideal solution.  just as I understand you can have
entry.35.php as a template specific for that post ID, if there was an
option to have tag.foo.php for the foo tag, then all kinds of doors
would be open.  I think (notes, to self) more documentation on how to
output specific tags (ala asides) and exclude specific tags from the
home.php and entry.multiple.php would also further this discussion.
(Some info here: http://wiki.habariproject.org/en/Asides )

I too was resistant to the idea of only using tags, but the more I
read about taxonomy and started playing with tags, the more I felt I
was open to do what I wanted, without being harnessed by the category
structure.  I certainly second the idea of the "magic tags", and I
believe someone (Morydd ??) had started some preliminary work on that.

As a user and general member of the community, I'm -1 to the idea of
categories being part of core, rather build on the tag structure.

~miklb

Just to throw my 2 cents in, and I can't believe nobody has said this
yet, but the number one thing I see as a difference between tags and
categories is hierarchy. Tags are essentially flat. Categories have
some form of structure.

Operating Systems
    Linux
        Red Hat
        Ubuntu
        Gentoo
        Slackware
    Windows
        98
        NT
        ME
        2000
        XP
        Vista
    Mac OS X
        10.4 Tiger
        10.5 Leopard
    BSD
        FreeBSD
        OpenBSD
        NetBSD

My instinct tells me this could be easily implemented using the
current tag system with some... "jooblies"

--
--Robert Deaton

Hi All,

Please forgive me; I havent read the entire thread, some parts were
not shallow enough for my brain cells.

I see categories to be "totally" different from tags, and I believe
many blogers do. There are too many sites that uses categories along
with tags, that presents different functionality with them. Im a bit
suprised that their difference in functionality is being questioning
here.

I dont get the comment that since both are "signifiers for how data is
organized"  so they are the same.
This is how I get this approach;
"I, sometimes, use lighter to light my cigarette and I also,
sometimes, use matches to light my cigarette. Therefore both matches
and the lighters are the same thing, or should be treated as the
samething. Lets dont sell matches in our grocery store anymore". This
is how I see that approach.

I also did not like the idea of making tags behave like categories
whenever requested. If categories and tags are different things <and
sure they are> then they should be handled different both on the UI
and at the backend.

Thanks,
Halil

Thanks everyone.  I hope that this at least has you thinking more
about the tag/category controversy.  And while I get and can see an
advantage to the pseudo-category approach, I have a feeling that a
category plugin will still be made.

RICH: "So ... having said all that, that doesn't mean that it will
have this

I wouldn't expect this tomorrow.  Especially since 0.2Dev just came
out.  (And I'm not privy to the milestones - or am I? - and I would
think that this will wait 'till christmas or later.

SCOTT:"If controls were in place to provide the functionality

Nope.  As long as I can differentiate them, I'm fine with pseudo-
categories.

OWEN:"A plugin (or core code, assuming there was a

On one hand, I like this approach.  I think I can handle typing in
tag:foo for each post.  On the other hand, having a predefined list of
cat/tags to select from would be desirable.  But that can be in the
form of a plugin.

ROBERT:"Just to throw my 2 cents in, and I can't believe nobody has
said this

That's actually why I named my post 'Habari and Structure.' (I'm
pretty sure what you said was sorta in the "in my head" draft.)

 I'm thinking that in the mind of most of the developers, what you
suggest would be added as a plugin  Since you have at least three
levels (Operating system, Linux, Red Hat.)  Unless you're going to
have a meta-tag(Operating sytem) a jooblie(Linux, Mac) and a tag(Red
Hat.)

SCOTT:"I don't want Habari to suffer because we're trying to be all
things to

In every content management system a piece of content is simply a
piece of content.  My feeling is that the system should be able to
manipulate it in different ways.  (That's where the content types come
in.)

HGUROL:"I see categories to be "totally" different from tags,

 If you use the terms 'container' and 'label' they are different.
But what do most bloggers use categories for?  Some use it to label
their posts.  Others use it for navigation/structure.  Wouldn't pseudo-
tags do the same thing?

HGUROL:"Lets dont sell matches in our grocery store anymore"."

What I think will happen (and I'm not one of the developers, just an
observer right now) is that Habari plans on putting the lighers (tags)
at the checkout counter (core) and have matches (categories) down
aisle one next to the charcoal.

So to sum up I'm +1 on pseudo-tags and I'm +1 on a category plugin
system that would give added (advanced?) structure to sites that need
it.

On 8/4/07, silverwing <hodgk...@gmail.com> wrote:

I hope that you are able to monitor the production of tags/categories
so that we produce something that is at least flexible enough to
provide a plugin developer a ledge upon which to build the
functionality you need.  Oversight by users is itself a valuable
contribution in my mind.

Another point I wanted to make is that tags and categories, while
useful for providing some organization of content, need not be the
single solution to site navigation.  It might be useful to have a
separate system (or more than one!) that lets you build navigation to
different content based on different criteria.  The recent menu plugin
release provides such a feature, demonstrating that the navigation of
the site can be completely independent of that actual categorization
of content.

To delve into the "dev" part of habari-dev for a moment, it might be
neat to implement as a plugin or core feature a new, third type of
post that would allow you to choose what data it would display from
the publication form.  This selection might also include the template
that is used to display it.  So you could choose template A, and "All
of the posts that start with 'llama' in the title".  Allowing the user
to select multiple sets of these criteria would be useful for
displaying both the primary page content and the navigation, and would
provide a significant customization facility to a blog.

Or maybe I just went off the deep end.  Thoughts?

Owen

Don't be surprised -- _lots_ of things taken for granted are being
questioned.  I think it's a good way to innovate where possible, and it
helps us better understand many things which are often left to assumption.

That's an accurate analogy only if you accept prima facie that
categories and tags are two different things.  Two physical objects are
clearly different things; but intellectual concepts like "category" and
"tag" aren't necessarily as disparate.

I encourage everyone to read this essay by Clay Shirky:
   http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

--
GPG 9CFA4B35 | ski...@skippy.net | http://skippy.net/

On Aug 4, 2007, at 19:07, silverwing wrote:

Perhaps I'm completely missing something but 1) I fail to see that  
there is a controversy and 2) I'm unclear why you're so concerned  
about the implementation details, if functionality can be implemented  
that gives you exactly what you want from categories. If they do  
exactly what you want them to do, in what way are they "pseudo-
categories". Please be specific.

What is of value here is a statement of desired functionality. Unless  
you're going to implement it yourself, I'm at a loss to understand  
why it matters if they happen to be implemented as tags on the back  
end, in a way that is completely unseen by the end-user.

Yes, you are privy to the milestones. All discussion of development  
goals and milestones occurs on this list. There is no back-room cabal.

Yeah, I pretty much disagree with this. Tags and Categories can each  
be either flat or hierarchical. It's a question of implementation,  
not something intrinsic to either thing.

Nesting tags is no more difficult than nesting anything else.

Yes, possibly, but it is important that we select a finite set of  
goals, in order that they be attainable. If we, at this point in our  
product's life, decide to be infinitely extensible, we're simply  
setting ourselves up to never achieve success.

I don't buy, and never have bought, arguments that rely on this  
fictional group of group-thinking people called bloggers. Bloggers  
don't think alike. Wordpress discussion always seemed to hinge on  
this notion that bloggers think alike. It's hogwash, and it's one of  
the things that alienates non-techie bloggers, and why they use  
blogger.com and related services. Perhaps bloggers who participate in  
development discussion on blog software projects have a few things in  
common in their thoughts, but they represent a vanishingly small  
subset of bloggers, and a subset that shrinks every day. There is no  
such thing as what "most bloggers" do. Most bloggers sign up for free  
blogging services, pick one of the available themes (maybe) and never  
again think about anything other than logging in and writing their  
next update.

Not at all sure I followed the matches/lighters analogy. But, then,  
I'm not most bloggers. ;-)

--
If you miss this moment
You miss your life

On Aug 4, 2007, at 21:36, Owen Winkler wrote:

Oooh. Shiny. I like that idea.

--
We are here and it is now.
Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
H.L.Mencken