Best practice: tags or notes?

[Jennifer Davis]

A friend and I are having a disagreement. I recently decided that "the
more tags the better" was the right solution to re-finding bookmarks.
1) Tags are free; 2) I can think of many facets when I save a link
that I *might* think of a year from now; 3) I already have many tags
due to the lack of hierarchical tags (i.e., lots of IS_history,
IS_controversies, IS_thisandthat) so it's pretty hard to glance
through my tag cloud to find a category unless I'm positive of the tag
I'm looking for ("LIBR200" as a class number).

My friend counters with: put all those keywords in the notes section.
Use notes for search terms; use tags for quick direct access.

As a library and information science student, I want to get this
right. I haven't had enough classes on ontologies and folksonomies yet
to KNOW which way is best. I also haven't had enough training on
online search methodologies to have figured out a search phrase for
Google (or pinboard) to come up with *anything* resembling an answer
to this question. So I thought I'd ask you good people.

How do you use tags and notes? Why?

Also, how would you search for other peoples' opinions on this topic?
I've had a devil of a time coming up with an appropriate search
string.

Thanks!

- Jennifer

[maciej]

I don't think there's a right answer for this (other than, for God's
sake don't take any classes in ontology or folksonomy).

Personally I'm a fan of the 'wall of tags' approach, but that's
strictly my personal preference. If there's one thing I've learned
running the site, it's that people have vastly different habits and
tricks for organizing their stuff, and there's no One True Path. I
hope some of our users will describe their own approaches in this
thread, and you can pick a style that best fits your own level of OCD
+ personality.

As far as search goes, tags and descriptions are thrown into the same
search bucket, so they should be searchable roughly to the same
degree. Stuff that's tagged is more discoverable by other people
(since it goes in the global tag feeds).

[VANJ]

I am long time delicious user considering a switch to pinboard.

My 2c - Nowadays there are many ways to add to The List, iPhone clients, Reader, browser, etc. Not all of them offer the ability to type in tags/notes and even if they did, I wouldn't want to type anything on a small iPhone keyboard. Just tap/slide something to add the bookmark and you are done. So, as such, I am finding that I end up with many "unadorned" links that, if I choose to, I need to go back and add tags/notes to. So nstead of using either tags or notes, I would much rather use Pinboard's (paid) full search functionality and outsource the heavy lifting to Google :-)

[fakeisthenewreal]

On Saturday, January 28, 2012 10:21:13 PM UTC-5, Jennifer Davis wrote:

3) I already have many tags
due to the lack of hierarchical tags (i.e., lots of IS_history,
IS_controversies, IS_thisandthat)

Here's your problem!

There's no need for hierarchy, because you build your own with intersections. A tag like IS_history is just two tags together: IS and history. Just break them apart and your tag list will get much easier to read. The penalty in time and energy in looking at the intersection of IS+history is much lighter than the pain of having to remember if its IS_local_libraries or IS_libraries_local. Use lots of common words for tags and life will be easier.

 

[jvc26]

At the moment I've been a subscriber to the many-tags == better school. I think of tags less as a 'quick-access' method, rather another form of markup for future searching. As a result I have so many tags at the moment my tag cloud does not allow for rapid access to my bookmarks. My other reason for not adopting a few-categories (read tags) approach then I'd have to search anyway, as there would be lots of bookmarks under each header.

J

[Mario Fischer]

I use tags and here's why:

- Using the notes field has one disadvantage: Depending on which tool you use to add links the notes field might be used for other data - for example the tweet if you auto-import from twitter or selected text from the website in different browser plugins.

- You can easily find all untagged items by using the "without tags" menu item on the pinboard page. That's not easily possible when using notes.

- And with tags you can have a list of all your used tags, so in this list it's easy to spot mistyped tags for example. Not so with notes..

Hope that helps,

mario

[Kerstin]

I use a mixed-methods approach. Short, informative titles, detailed
notes, detailed tags. I have rules for each of these.

I think tags are your best bet to find stuff again, if you use them
right. Having a lot of tags is good, but using and organizing them
consistently is much more important. I have a pretty strict system
both for my fandom and non-fandom bookmarks that is organized by
prefixes because of the lack of tag bundles. I have strict criteria in
which bundles each bookmark has to have at least one tag, and when a
tag is applicable. I can usually find bookmarks most quickly by
looking for intersections across tag bundles (e.g. -research-resource -
tool t:statistics if I'm looking for a random number generator) I find
the "I can think of many facets when I save a link that I *might*
think of a year from now" approach a little dangerous, because that
sounds too much like free-form association to me, which might lead to
inconsistent and sporadic use of certain tags. I go the other way
around: take my existing (and extensive) tag list and check all that
apply, according to my set of rules. That way, when I go back and look
for something, I know what I must have tagged it with, because I know
the rules by which I tag.

Titles contains topic and author/domain. I use notes for summaries and
subjective evaluations. The only time I use notes and/or titles for
searching bookmarks is when I do re-taggings. I avoid creating new
tags for bookmarks and will only do so if I know that there is another
bookmark in my collection that fits the bill or am certain that I will
in future bookmark more links with that tag. If I think a certain tag
is applicable, but it would be a new tag, I'll include a keyword in
the note and search for that later when I find more bookmarks for that
tag.

In short: Well-organized, detailed tags for finding stuff, notes and
title as a fallback.

[Scott]

I have a use that's maybe a little different...

I bookmark publicly to keep up with things I read and want to use to
create aggregation/link dumps on my blog. So I use the description for
my own personal thoughts on the article I've read and sometimes to
quote the article. I use tags to create the tags that go along with
the post in WordPress. Every few days (or weeks), I publish the post
that's constantly being built based on my Pinboard bookmarks by a
plugin, and a new one starts up.

[Mike Schinkel]

On Feb 2, 2012, at 1:47 PM, Scott wrote:
> I have a use that's maybe a little different...
>
> I bookmark publicly to keep up with things I read and want to use to
> create aggregation/link dumps on my blog. So I use the description for
> my own personal thoughts on the article I've read and sometimes to
> quote the article. I use tags to create the tags that go along with
> the post in WordPress. Every few days (or weeks), I publish the post
> that's constantly being built based on my Pinboard bookmarks by a
> plugin, and a new one starts up.

I've been wanting to start doing that. Did you write the plugin that does this or is available for download (so I don't have to write my own. :)

-Mike

[Mike Schinkel]

After years of using delicious and pinboard, I've come to the same conclusion as Jennifer; just use single word tags and then use intersections to find them.  I've also found that it's very difficult to come up with a structured methodology that you'll remember to use consistently and for which there won't be tons of exceptions as time and the world and what you tag evolves. So just add LOTS of tags.

BTW, when I'm tagging for a person I use their full name as one tag, for me it would "mikeschinkel."

Hope this helps.

-Mike

[Craig Patik]

I have only a couple dozen tags and I use them for organization.

I use the description to get around Pinboard's lack of fuzzy search. For example, a search for "css html" won't match an item tagged "css3 html5", so my descriptions are a nonsensical list of conjugations and alternative spellings. I also toss in some paraphrasing since I don't know what will come to mind the next time I try to search for an item -- today I might think of a tool as a "convertor", and in a month I might think of it as a "translator", so I put both in there.

[C R]

I use tags to link similarities between my bookmarks together (not
necessarily similar in content, mostly bookmarks that give me a
similar feeling that makes me want to tag them alike). I tag with
general, specific, personal, random keywords. Sometimes I tag
endlessly and end up with heaps of tags that have only one bookmark.
Although I still keep those tags, waiting in case one day I'll find
some
others to tag with it. Mostly, I find tagging very useful for
browsing
bookmarks (mine or others). I love it when I'm not exactly sure or
can't
find the right term of what I'm looking for. I gave up on prefixes as
replacement for tag bundles but find plain tags relatively useful
with
the ⊕ tool to narrow the search, a "without this tag" would even be
more appreciated though.

I use the description for essential/personal notes, summaries and/or
a snippet of that specific link, and the title for, well, the title
and the
author. I find I skim through descriptions rather quickly and only
read
it properly when something catches my interest. It does the job when
it
gives me an idea of what the link is without having to click into it
and if
I might be interested in it. It's really useful for finding a specific
bookmark
when I remember what exactly was in its description field.

I think tags are good for browsing, "the more tags the better"
approach
is great to categorise/narrow a set of links down and the notes for
searching a specific keyword or link.

Lately, I've been loving the "search full text" included in the
archival
features. I use it to browse and search for specific keywords. It's
also
great for when I only remember a little bit in the bookmark, mostly
some inconsequential thing, but it finds it. It's rather annoying
when
it's a commonword, then it becomes a general search not much unlike
browsing tags.

[Dan Burzo]

I use notes for:
- picking out highlights / important ideas / summaries of the article
- writing my reaction to the piece

Tags abide to these rules:
- multiple words are separated-by-dash
- hierarchical ones use the slash: design/industrial vs. design/
interactive (i also drop in the general 'design' tag)
- I recently moved everything that's relevant to me only into
"#personal" tags like "#personal:projects", "#personal:noteworthy" --
this one i think is a bit of syntax overkill but it's nice to have the
personal tags on top of the list
- another idea I'm experimenting with is adding stuff like
"type:article", "type:quote", "type:interview" to describe the form of
the article -- again ocd-ish but hey.

I'd like to see more consistent use within the community but I realize
it's a pipe dream. If you're looking for Brian Eno you'll need to look
for 'brian-eno', 'brianeno', 'eno' etc.
That being said, the fact that Pinboard searches everything made this
less of a problem, in addition to eliminating some obsolete tagging
habits like putting 'nytimes' on everything that's on the New York
Times website.