Playing Tag; or, Random Thoughts on Random Thoughts

As a novice blogger, I'm still learning the rules of the game.

Take the practice of tagging, or labelling, posts. Does it serve the blogger in any way, or is it simply a tool that enables readers to find similar posts? How does one choose tags, and is there a limit to the number that can be applied? If a post has too many, will some law of diminishing blogging returns set in?

Must every post be tagged? (I probably ought to have asked this first.) If I'm just inflicting random thoughts on the blogosphere, as I am today, ought I to classify them in case someone actually wants to read them again or, heaven forbid, find more of the same? And to what family would such ramblings belong? "Random Thoughts" ... "Fruitless Musings" ... "Wasted Ether" ... accurate, but not very appealing. (Perhaps this is why several of my posts remain unlabelled.)

Tagging also involves aesthetic decisions. If readers are to locate posts by topic, a taglist is indispensable. But which type? There's the simple taglist: straightforward and alphabetical, running down the side of one's blog. Also available is the label cloud, a free-wheeling, multi-type-size, floating-words type of list, which can be customized to include several colours and even animation. Then there is the file-tab type which marches across the top of the page. How does one decide? (If one is a minimalist such as myself, one chooses the first option.)

And is there such a thing as tagging etiquette? For instance, is it permissible to choose a label that implies a compliment to oneself? I may think I've written a post that is profound, or funny, or life-changing. But modesty forbids me to label it so. On the other hand, the blog itself could be viewed as a kind of exercise in narcissism, so why quibble over a further bit of self-endorsement? (What contradictory bundles of diffidence and confidence we humans are.)

An example (or digression, I'm not sure which): It was very difficult for me to start using the "Poetry" tag. Poetry, to me, means Shakespeare or the Oxford Book of English Verse or something worthy of being read by Garrison Keillor on "Writer's Almanac". I certainly never thought of my small pensées as qualifying for that exalted label. The "Three Great Things" from every bike ride - a habit of some years' standing - started out as a mental exercise to while away the miles, an effort to distil into the best and fewest words some of the things I saw and felt while cycling. But if Coleridge was right in his definition of poetry - "the best words in the best order" - then what I've really been doing all these years is composing, or trying to compose, poetry. It took the comments of another to make me see it that way. (Thank you, Lolly.) And a big leap of confidence to start labelling my "best words" as poetry.

Random thoughts, indeed.

I suppose that the labelling of posts, like any of life's choices, comes down to doing what seems best at the time. That's the beauty of blogging, after all - having the freedom to say what one wants, when one wants, in a format of one's own choosing.

So some of my posts shall remain tagless. (I like to think of it as not keeping all my goods in the shop window.) Let there be some surprises hidden in the archive.

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