I love Movable Type’s categories, but every once in awhile I come to the realization that they’re not doing the job for me. Categories are most useful for me when I want to search through my archives for a specific post. With categories, I don’t have to remember when I posted something, I just have to remember what topic I associate it with, then search that category page until I find it.
There are two signs that I need new categories. One is when a new story comes along that I know I’m going to follow obsessively, like the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup. This sort of story deserves its own slot so I can easily refer to my entire coverage on it. The other sign is being unable to remember what category I filed an earlier post in, either because I’m trying to find it now or because I’m posting a followup. When I realize that I’ve posted the same story under three different categories because I could never remember which one I’d decided it fit in, it’s time to create a new one.
With that in mind, there are a few new categories on the sidebar: The Making of the President, for things relating to the ongoing Presidential election, Election 2004, for other races of interest, Show Business for Ugly People, for generic political stuff, and Scandalized!, for various stupid political tricks. It is somehow unsurprising to me, after recategorizing a bunch of posts, that this latter subject would have the most initial entries.
Still mulling over the best solution to my case of neverending blogroll expansion. In the interim, I’ve decided to compound the problem by adding a few more entries, some of which were overdue for inclusion:
Angry Bear
Pacific Views
Rob Booth
Suburban Guerrilla
Uggabugga
Yellow Doggerel Democrat
I’ve moved things around a bit one the sidebar to make the blogroll a bit more prominent, and to group things more efficiently (at least I hope so). We’ll see how it works for me.
Yeah, I’m glad I did my massive blogroll reorganization last weekend. I’ve found it very helpful to group all of the Texas Blogs together. Otherwise, I easily forget to visit a lot of good Texas blogs. With them all together, it’s easy to go down the line and visit them all in a short period of time. Just a suggestion.
Hey, thanks, Charles! As your blog is one of my most frequent visits (twice a day is not uncommon), a link from you is very much appreciated!
I do like ByronUT’s suggestion. When I’m in Texas politics mode, I like to hit you and him and everyone else, one right after the other. I realize blogroll organization is a very subjective matter, but considering our current situation, it would be really good to be able simply to run down the list of Texas blogs. Perhaps a redundant short list of Texas bloggers somewhere near the bottom of the right nav? As Byron says, it’s just a suggestion.
Now all I need to do is undertake a reorg of my own blog links… I keep putting it off until I do the whole site reorg, and that, to my chagrin, may be a while.
Again, thanks!
Ah categories … already been through hell with my own, having to recategorize several posts to break them down a tad. I have a hunch you might have some difficulty limiting the category to one given your political additions there, however. What to do when a story involves Bush endorsing a candidate for a 2004 election, for instance?
But there’s never any easy answer … I leave mine a little more generic to save that problem a tad, but I could still use a few more category additions of my own. It’s a neverending quest, this blogging.
Thanks for the addition. I sympathize with your length-of-blogroll concerns–ideally, the roll would reflect an actual endorsement rather than a plea for reciprocity. At one point, I tried to adopt a one on/one off policy, but kept finding too many good new blogs (your blog, suburban guerilla, skeptical notion, whiskey bar, and likely story, for example, all contributed to forcing me to break my short-lived rule).
AB
I long ago abandoned my original plan of keeping the roll short. This was right around the time I discovered that there were too many good bloggers to even keep track of.
Thanks much for the inclusion, and for your coverage of the redistricting mess.
I do have a link on the right to my list of Texas Political Bloggers – it’s just above the blogroll. I’m also contemplating a sub-list of bloggers who are people I know in Real Life. It’s in the works.
It’s not so much that I’m worried about my blogroll being too big as it is not being as useful to me as it could be. With as many blogs on there as there are, I fear I don’t pay enough attention to some blogs that I’d like to check more often. That’s as much a function of how my day is going as anything else, though, so maybe blaming the blogroll is misguided.
I figure I’ll always have situations where a post can reasonably be put in more than one category. I just knew that lately I had way too many posts that I felt were being misfiled. No one ever said being organized was a static thing.