[wp-testers] Categories vs. Tagging

[Owen Winkler]

Nickolas Means wrote:
> I think having both tags and categories would be redundant.  It makes  
> more sense for Flickr, where you might have a set of 200 pictures  taken 
> at a certain event, but most people aren't going to create sets  of a 
> certain subject - that's what tags are for.  Likewise, in a  blogging 
> structure, most people aren't going to create 200 microposts  from some 
> certain event or in a short period of time.  The 200 posts  would be 
> created over a long period of time, and in that case, using  categories 
> vs. tags is a matter of semantics, not functionality.

This argument really comes down to people trying to ply their method of 
taxonomy upon others.  We're going to have to come to the conclusion 
that how each person chooses to organize his own site is his own choice 
to make.

Personally, I like being able to say: "This post is primarily about X, 
but also covers topics Y and Z, which I normally don't talk about but 
might but useful to know in case you were looking for this topic." 
Tagging lets me do Y and Z, and Categories accomplishes X.

Moreover, if I write one post about "Terrell Owens", I don't want a 
whole category in my public category list for him.  I would rather have 
a "Football" or "Sports" category than such a granular and chaotic list 
of categories as to include his name specifically.  Similarly, I might 
want to review the latest Harry Potter movie, but I don't want a whole 
unique category in my list for that one review when "Movies" will do 
just fine.

But that's how I use categories, and probably not how you do.  I use a 
plugin to get the tagging work done, and that's ok by me.

WordPress' category functionality has the ease of use of tagging, but it 
does have a few small but significant *functional* differences:

* Every post must have at least one category.
* Categories can be heirarchical and tags cannot.
* Tags can often be combined in a URL to find posts that match all the tags.

What bothers me is the suggestion that the "Categories" label should 
change to "Tags" in the UI.  The only reaosn I see to do so would be to 
succomb to the "Web 2.0" malady of throwing around buzzwords.  Nevermind 
that the tag name in RSS that enables tagging for sites like Technorati 
is literally "<category>".

As was previously mentioned, WordPress 2.0 is in a feature freeze, so no 
change is likely to occur to this revision.  Thank goodness.

Owen