YJL

1   Labeling like nuts

Starting with the amount of labels this blog currently has, as I mentioned in previous post, this is some statistics to show you how the situation is:

1396 ( 68.4%) Labels labeled   1 times
 293 ( 14.4%) Labels labeled   2 times
 131 (  6.4%) Labels labeled   3 times
  62 (  3.0%) Labels labeled   4 times
  38 (  1.9%) Labels labeled   5 times
  24 (  1.2%) Labels labeled   6 times
  19 (  0.9%) Labels labeled   7 times
  16 (  0.8%) Labels labeled   8 times
  12 (  0.6%) Labels labeled   9 times
   4 (  0.2%) Labels labeled  10 times

Almost 1,400 out of about 2,000 labels has only been labeled once. To be honest, I absolutely have no clue how on Earth that I could ever have so many distinctive labels. If I were not myself, I would guess a dictionary was used for labeling or a randomizer was used. Clearly, my labeling method is one of crazy methods.

Label is like tag as in WordPress in my opinion. Blogger doesn’t suggest category and I don’t think we really need it, or I might have another huge issue with categorizing. (Lucky for me.) On Blogger, only a few characters are not allowed to be used in label, you can pretty much label in any fashion you prefer.

I know some people use Label as a category and only have a few labels in their blogs, they restrict them to have only a few. It is not a way I like, I don’t want to see my posts are classified in only a handful of categories. I want to be able to tell what a post is about by reading labels. Not something like only “computer” or “idea,” they are too broad. I need something more specific, more clear.

Label is not limited to just a word, it can be a phrase in my use. I use in this way a lot, because, sometimes, a single word is rather ambiguous. In the rest of post, I will list some examples, so you can understand what problem I really have.

2   Acronym or full words or both?

For example, would you label with “RSS” or “Really Simple Syndication?” How about both? This is already a tough decision for me to decide.

Maybe RSS is not a good example since I am sure not many people know the full words of RSS. “DVCS” or “distributed version control” might be a better example. (Note that “system” is omitted.)

For the first example, I prefer “RSS;” for the second, I feel “distributed version control” is a much better label, even it’s very long.

Using both certainly is not favored by me, although I still do it sometimes. It creates redundancy, seems unnecessary, but that’s really hard for me to drop one of them.

3   “Google” and “Google Reader”, or just “Google Reader?”

Firstly, it’s weird if you split “Google Reader” into two labels “Google” and “Reader,” the later makes no sense at all, or you can say it’s ambiguous. So it seems “Google” and “Google Reader” are better labels to me.

Now the question is “Is ‘Google’ redundant?”

We already have “Google” in “Google Reader,” why specifically label with “Google?” I am not sure but it seems logical to me for labeling so.

If you have checked out a Label page, you know if you click on “Google Reader,” then you will only get posts labeled with it. If you want to get all posts about “Google,” you can’t unless you use search function.

4   “Parameter Expansion” or “parameter expansion?”

As you may have noticed that I am someone who doesn’t like TitleCase in post title—however I do use TitleCase for heading using CSS style, definitely not a fan of TITLECASE. I can read blogs with TitleCase, but for TITLECASE, no thanks

“Parameter Expansion” is a term of Bash, so do you TitleCase it or just leave them in lower case? I think for terms like technical terms, they have be capitalized in each single word unless it is written in different way by the official source.

That said, I really hate people to capitalize names which are not written in capital. For example, my username “livibetter.” Many times, people capitalized it out of a manner, I believe. Or some software name with unusual spelling and cases mixed with. The issue also goes another around, writing in all lower case when origin isn’t written in that.

5   “label” or “labeling?”

Using this post as example, should I label it with “label” or “labeling?”

Of course, it’s about “label” but it was about the problem during labeling process, a progressive action. If I did label with “labeling,” then it’s separate from “label” posts, if I don’t label it with “label.”

6   “labels” or “label?”

I know, I have just complicated the whole problem up a dimension. Although I refrain myself from labeling in plural form by all means, I am sure a couple of labels in plural form has slipped through my finger tips.

There is a similar question when documenting a code project like writing commit message or a description of a function. For example, from some guideline I read long ago, using “Fix” or “Add” instead of “Fixes” or “Adds,” avoiding third-person singular form. I know this is different than plural form as in language, but both of them are facing the same issue.

For this one, I could almost say I would use “label.” However, I remember there were a few times, I was really tempted to use plural form.

7   Chaoslution

My head really hurts for this problem and I don’t have an answer. I can guess this might not be any issue to you, I put too much thoughts on this and I know it.

I feel labels are only important to the post writer, because I hardly can remember last time that I check out someone’s labels or tags or whatever you like to call. That’s same reason why I didn’t have a label gadget or tag cloud, they are not particularly useful. At least, for most of time.

The only main purpose is they look fancy, seriously, who is gonna go through a one-thousand-label list? Or a few labels, but each with 100 posts? No one would really read that. But maybe that’s just me.

Anyways, looking forward to hearing what you think about this. Any thoughts are very welcome!