Poll: Tags, Memories, and LJ Clients

[rsadelle]

I've started relying more on people's tags to find their other fic and not bothering to go look at their memories. There are three reasons for this:

1. So many people don't use memories anymore that looking for them just got to be an exercise in disappointment.
   
2. When I find a piece of good fic via delicious, it's so easy to just click on the tags at the top of the entry to find the author's other, similar fic. (My most favorite tag ever is fic involving eating cake off of sammy; the more general fic involving cake is a close second.)
   
3. LJ changed the profile page, and there's no longer a nice big, red heart to click on to get to people's memories. Sure, there's a link that says "Memories," but it's lumped in with a lot of other equally sized and formatted text.

So this has me thinking about what to do about my LJ. I'd like to start tagging things so other people who might wander by won't be frustrated by my lack of tags the way I'm starting to be frustrated by other people's lack of tags. But there are questions to be asked:

• What about the nearly eight years of my entries that I've memorified? Obviously I'll go back and add tags to the fic entries. Do I go back and tag everything else that was memorified too?
  
• Do I keep adding things to memories or give that up in favor of only tagging them?
  
• Tags clearly serve the triple purpose of categorizing, commenting, and demonstrating cleverness. Do I stick to simple, descriptive tags, or go for more entertaining things?
  
• I've been using an extremely ancient client to post entries (LiveJournal 1.4.6), which comes from a time Before Tags and therefore has no way to add them to an entry. How should I post things now?

The best way to answer questions about using LJ is, of course, with a poll on LJ.

[Poll #1309064]

Comments

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Yes, you should tag everything, but you don't have to do it all at once. (Though it's less time consuming than you think; when I took over the comm eat_crow I manually tagged every entry and it only took me about six hours, split over 2 days).

I would advise that for your commonly used tags, you go with simple things you will remember easily, so you don't end up with nearly duplicate tags. You can still have the occasional witty tag, but I imagine it's a real pain in the ass to remember the witty ones, and when you're posting from the LJ interface (which I do) it doesn't give you a drop-down list to select from. Of course, semagic or one of the popular LJ clients might, I don't know.

I wouldn't bother continuing to use memories, though. It's clear LJ is trying to phase that function out anyway.

[rsadelle]

I have over 200 more entries than eat_crow does now. I'm less worried about the time it takes to put in the tags than I am about the time it takes to decide which tags to apply to an entry. (Like all organization activities, it's the decisions that take the most work.)

I feel like tags are a different beast than memories, and I'm inclined to put more tags rather than fewer. (For example: I have a Harry Potter category of memories, but I can see further adding tags for pairings and discussion versus fic.)

I suppose I should have also posed this question: If I have a cleverer version of a simple tag, which one should I use? For example: ron/hermione or ron+hermione 4-evah!

And the other question I guess I could have asked: Should I dememorify all of the things that are currently memorified so everything is organized the same way?

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't realize you were thinking of tagging everything; I thought you were just going to tag your fic. I wouldn't recommend back-tagging all your entries unless you have lots of free time.

[rsadelle]

You didn't read the explanatory post above the poll where I said, "Obviously I'll go back and add tags to the fic entries."

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Well, I skimmed it but obviously too quickly, and by the time I reread the whole thing it was too late to edit since you had already replied.

Do you memory all your entries? Wow. That's very organized of you.

[rsadelle]

Almost all, yeah. LJ tells me I have 589 entries and 548 memories. I think I left some of the whiny personal posts unmemorified with the idea that they really didn't need to be found again, and at the time memories appeared, I probably didn't go back and memorify everything.

I actually do go back looking for things sometimes, and knowing what memory category they're likely to be in helps.

[rsadelle]

Hmm. Well, I tagged all of 2008 in less than two episodes of Keen Eddie, but now it's time for a break because December 2007 has a lot of entries and I want to go read some fic.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

if you do tag, use LJ archive - it will help with searching your journal. plus it doubles as an offline backup.

if yo ever decide to move memories to deli.icous I have a few tools for that.

back to tagging what we did for the vidding community is tag from x point forward and then made a master post for each category that links to the set of memories. that way clicking on the tags leads to the memories etc

[rsadelle]

I glanced at LJ Archive, and it wasn't immediately obvious what its advantages are. Can you tell me what you like about it? As for offline backup, I write all my entries in notepad and save them to my hard drive and then copy them into wherever I'm going to post to.

I don't know about using delicious. I find that other people's delicious accounts are sufficient for my fic finding needs, and I use my own bookmarks so little these days that they're not horribly important.

Hmmm. That's an interesting approach. I was thinking I would have more tags than memories (for example, I have a memory category for books, but for tags, I would probably have books, books: fiction, and books: nonfiction). I guess I could do some kind of master post and apply all possible tags to it.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

lj archive- allows you to download a copy of your journal. you can search through all entries and comments. it creates a back up of your journal. you can also export the journal as an html file (aka web page) or an xml file and post it elsewhere (wordpress)

creating one master post with tags is a way to go. but people will not be able to see the tags any better than they can see all the entries on the memories page. or a list of all your tags. you want to make it easy - I click on x tag and I see only x tagged posts. no hunting and pecking.

[rsadelle]

Thanks for the explanation! I'm not sure it's the right thing for me, but good to know about.

The more I think about this, the more I'm inclined to go back through and tag everything for completeness' sake.

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the Level 1 question in a Level 13 discussion, but what are these "Memories"?

[rsadelle]

Yet another reason to move to tags. Depending on what style this page is displaying in, there may be a bar at the top with some icons. One of them is a red heart with a + next to it, which would be the button to hit to add this entry to your memories. Memories are pretty much a pre-tag way of saving and categorizing things on LJ. The real advantages memories have over tags are (a) they've been around so they carry the historical record and (b) you can memorify other people's entries, but not tag them. If you like, you can peruse my memories. I believe I have only memorified things I have written; however some of those things were posted in communities (so I wouldn't be able to get to them through the tags on my LJ) and at least one story was written in the comments on a post in someone else's LJ (and is therefore also not accessible via my journal's tags).

[dedalvs.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info (and sorry I didn't reply sooner; busy)! I guess it's nice to be able to "tag" something that someone else has written in a consistent way. I suppose instead one can simply put a link to it in one of one's own posts, and then tag that (e.g. "Friend"), perhaps quoting a bit of it as a teaser.

[rsadelle]

I think I'll just keep the memories that are other people's posts memorified.

[rsadelle]

More concisely, here's the LJ FAQ entry on memories.