On Blogs, Indexing solutions and Metaphors

Some days back, I obsessed about finding a way of indexing / categorizing posts on the blog, without having to switch my blogging platform. Not that I did not contemplate the adulterous act of flirting with another service provider. I did…but something made me stay back…partly it was my fondness for this platform, partly the laziness of having to migrate content and in many ways it was that invincible annoying thought that ‘I would not take the easy way out and jump platforms…I shall stay here and look for alternatives’. Would you say…too much energy and thought invested into something so trivial…I would say maybe…but then it is my means to express myself. Don’t people invest time and money in pursuing photography or art…are those higher or better forms of self expression warranting that time and attention? Let’s leave that debate for another occasion.

So coming back to the point about indexing, I thought content on a blog is ‘dead’ if one does not have a way of indexing it. Whenever I would think about content on my blog that was un-indexed, I would feel like I have walked into a library that has books all jumbled up arranged in no particular order. Not a pretty picture in my mind. I tried a fitting in a couple of codes into the blogger template (not reducing the effort those guys have put in – in writing those hacks) – none of the ones I tried were fool proof. The fact that they can only index recent posts is known and acknowledged. But some did not even pick up the recent ones correctly.

I found an alternative in ‘tag clouds’ – though they don’t do the same job as what ‘categories’ do – tag clouds work like a surrogate for categories. It leaves you the hassle of pre-defining categories and I call it a hassle since I found it so difficult to ‘force-fit’ my posts into categories that the category called ‘miscellaneous / trivia / un-filed’ was burgeoning out of proportions. Tag clouds pick up key words from your posts and here again the method is not fool proof – but at least one can delete unwanted key words and add wanted ones and approximate how categories would work albeit with some effort.

There is no easy way to indexing posts. But I am beginning to wonder whether it’s all worth it after all – not that my love for my blog has become any less over time…not yet at least but am beginning to wonder whether the metaphor of a library for blogs is in itself passé.

Is the ‘watering hole’ metaphor then part of the dominant code around blogs? Don’t blogs today resemble ‘coffee houses’ of yesteryears? The coffee houses that dominated Europe in the mid 1600s functioned as information exchanges, centers for political or social debate and over time even acquired the reputation of specializing in a particular fields drawing clientele interested in particular subjects…says ‘The Economist’ when it talks about ‘Internet in a Cup’ (paid subscription required)

If blogs are emerging to acquire the character of coffee houses as they were or even modern day pubs, then the activity surrounding blogs would change. There would be a greater orientation to partake in recent conversations / posts rather than visiting a blog and reading on a topic of interest.

Depending on the metaphor you identify with, will influence whether you use it to ‘express’ or ‘exchange’ opinions and views; the frequency with which you post; the content that you post (topical v/s analytical); your response time to comments etc and depending on which of these metaphors become the dominant code around blogs will have a bearing on the features that publishing platforms in the future will be forced to offer.

I know I won’t be obsessing about indexing any more :)

blogs, blog metaphor, dominant code,