Comments on: Building a better reader-trap

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:09:16 +0000

Right on. The lack of an ability to group posts by category was one of the main reasons why I left Blogger last April. But I have yet to come up with an alternative term that really captures all that categories do. (The term “tag,” of course, is even more opaque to the non-blogger.) I suppose one approach would be to pursue the book analogy: since the archive listing is a Table of Contents, isn’t an alphabetized list of topics an Index? The problem for me, of course, is that I have over a thousand uncategorized posts. And I’ve kept the Categories list relatively short for ease of sidebar browsing, severly limiting its effectiveness as a true index. Perhaps this too should have its own page. But my time is better spent creating new stuff. I want someone to write a program that will extract keywords from posts and produce an index automatically, dammit!

By: kit

kit — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 07:04:40 +0000

I’m not there yet, either. Take categories (which I call “topics”). What does either term mean to a non-blogger?

It would be good to know.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:01:41 +0000

Thanks for the comment. I’m glad you agree that calling it a “table of contents” is a good idea. I think we bloggers should remember that most folks out there really aren’t too familiar with blogs and blog terminology, and when they happen on our sites, through a web search or what-have-you, navigation ought to be as transparent as possible. (I don’t quite feel I’m there yet.)

By: kit

kit — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:03:58 +0000

There are some very good ideas here.

One of the best ones is calling what amounts to a chronological index the “table of contents.” Everybody understands what that would be. Here’s to clear English.

VN is one of my favorite reads. I come in through the RSS feed. Thanks for all the good writing.