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I can think of my posts about computer books as being in the programming->books, or I can think of them as being in reviews->books or I can think of them as being in programming and being in reviews and being in books.

In the first two cases I have to choose between one category or another. In the third case I can have as many categories as I want but no hierarchy. This last most acurately characterizes the current "tags" fad sweeping around (see flickr, del.icio.us et all).

I think the best answer is a mix, where I can review a perl book and put that review in reviews->books and in programming->perl. What a coincidence! That's how my weblog works. Hmmm.

So what I can't do now, which I think I should build, is a way to look at category intersections in a way that's similar to subcategories. In other words, the perl subcategory is a way of filtering the entries in programming. If I look only at posts in programming->perl that are also in reviews->books then I am in effect looking at the subcategory programming->perl->reviews->books.

To flatten out: if you have some thing tagged as photos and books and some things tagged as books and reviews, then if you click into books you see reviews and photos as subcategories. I'm not sure how much I would like this. I think I'm going to try it.

I do think that having a hierarchy of categories instead of a totally flat tag space is helpful but I want to articulate exactly when and why.



Dated: 03/02/2006