Post categorization (and people who pick up the feed)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2005/03/27 16:51 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2005/03/27/402746.aspx

Ok, a poll for the people who read here regularly....

I was pinged a few people to register this blog as being involved with the various technology areas that it touches (Windows, the CLR, SQL Server, Office, AD, globalization, etc.) and I did so.

But note that my post categories (the list over to the left) are based on various internationalization topics, not on technology.

This caused someone to post a comment suggesting that I fix the bug that caused the post to be listed under an unrelated technology.

Well, they are right, no argument about that.

To fix this, I have several options:

  1. I can add categories for the various technologies and then subscribe them as needed (seems messy since it means I will double the number of categories!)
  2. I can remove the current categories and replace them with new technology based ones (seems ugly since it does not really match how I think about stuff and much of it transcends product boundaries even if I do not call it out explicitly)
  3. I can do nothing and leave it all as it is now (seems like a bad idea if people are going to be unhappy)
  4. I can unregister in all of those product areas and just hope people wander over when they need to (will make the original folks who were pinging me unhappy)

I guess I am leaning toward (C) or (D) at this point, slightly more towards (D) since I am not trying to maximize hit count; I'd rather be on fewer radars than too many, if I have to choose.

Anyone have any thoughts? Does anyone use the old categories or are they sensible only to me? Would people prefer new prouduct based ones, instead?

# mark on 27 Mar 2005 3:25 PM:

Ignore the person who made the comment.

# Jim McFadden on 27 Mar 2005 5:18 PM:

I suggest that the appropriate choice is C. While it is true that some people will be unhappy and unhappiness is a bad thing, the alternative is that you change how you do your web log and classify your posts in ways that aren't actually reflective of how you think of them. So, what you're really doing is moving the unhappiness around: Off of those who complain and on to yourself. This seems unproductive.

# Mike Dunn on 27 Mar 2005 10:14 PM:

I personally don't use the categories. I get the feed for the entire blog, and on the rare occasions that a post doesn't interest me, I move on and read something else. (This is what I do with all the blogs I read, even busy ones like Raymond's.) So I guess I would pick option C.

# Johan Petersson on 28 Mar 2005 1:17 AM:

C or D preferred. I don't use the category feeds, but the current categorization makes sense to me and should work fine for browsing the archive by topic.

# Eric on 28 Mar 2005 5:47 AM:

C. Your posts often seem orthogonal to those technologies (SQL Server, CLR, Windows) in that they cross all of them. It doesn't make sense to limit your categories to what would in the end be arbitrary decisions that don't really add information.

# Serge Wautier on 28 Mar 2005 7:01 AM:

100% 'Me too' about Mike's comment.

# bg on 28 Mar 2005 7:56 AM:

C - i always view blogs through an aggregator (netnewswire) and the categories aren't useful to me any how.

whilst u do cover lots of different technology its always under the internationalisation flag. - ignore the persons comment.

the bug is annoying though ;]

bg

# Dean Harding on 28 Mar 2005 6:07 PM:

100% 'Me too' about Serge's comment, which was 100% 'Me too' about Mike's comment.

# Chris Lundie on 29 Mar 2005 8:36 AM:

I didn't even know you had categories, but the current ones look good to me. They might be useful to a new reader who has just found your blog and wants to look in the archives.
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