Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Diggo (Thing 6)

My main problem with diggo (and delicious) is that I am too OCD lol. I try to keep my tags to a minimum because I still fall into the habit of thinking of tags as "folders" and I want everything to fit neatly into a folder. I'm not a good tagger at all - not on flickr, not on diggo, not on my blog, etc.

Here's a story to illustrate: Let's say I find a cool web-tech website/blog post/whatever. I tag it with web2.0. Now if this particular website is specifically about plurk, I should tag it with "plurk", right? But in my mind, the conversation goes like this: "But there are a couple of other sites that I've bookmarked that mention plurk - so I guess I should go back and add a plurk tag to those - but they also talk about twitter, so I should tag it with twitter too ... but then that meas I'll have to go through ALL of my links tagged with web2.0 and tag them with whatever specific tool they mention" then I look and see that I have hundreds of sites tagged web2.0 "Geez - that's gonna take FOREVER! And then, I guess I'll also have to see if any of my inks tagged with productivity mention plurk, twitter, etc. - oh and those should really be tagged with GTD if they mention that! And I think there's one somewhere about jott - I should see if any others need that tag too" etc. etc. - and because in my brain, EVERYTHING is all or nothing (no way could I tag just that one website that started all of this with "plurk" without tagging ALL of them!), I end up just tagging it with web2.0 because I have to be at work in the morning and don't have hours and hours to go through and retag all of my bookmarks.

I also try to only keep sites that I refer back to in my diggo and delilcious accounts (I will admit that I usually save to deicious unless I'm at school where it's blocked - then I just import my delicious links to diggo periodically). Sites that I find interesting and may want to come back to when I have time, I usually just add to my google bookmarks - then if I find I'm going back to it frequently, I will add it to delicious/diggo. And I don't often bookmark blog posts, I will star them in google reader ...

In other words, I guess I don't really use diggo as a "social bookmarking" tool like it's meant to be used, but more as a "personal bookmark organization" tool - which I should change now :-) Which is partially why I'm taking this course. I may have to increase my zoloft, but I'll try to be a better tagger and share more bookmarks that I find interesting :-) Perhaps I should use google bookmarks to handle and organize the frequently used bookmarks I've been saving in delicious and diggo and start saving/sharing the ones I've been putting in google bookmarks ... that might make more sense :-)

And/or - I could use lists as "folders" ... hmm... hadn't thought of that one ...

So here is the link to my diggo bookmarks - which I've just looked at and there are several untagged items - my delicious site is much better organized It's a good thing it's summer - my diggo may be getting an overhaul lol


4 comments:

  1. Nicole, I love this post!!! I had to laugh at your comment about your OCD only because I can sooooooooooo relate!! :) I found myself "tabbing" everything on my diigo page with the same tags! How do you break it down? :) Like you, I'm hoping this class will help me out a little with this. I'm so glad to know I'm not in this OCD boat alone! Happy sailing my friend! :)

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  2. Oh I'm SO the captain of that boat lol - right now the tags I have are:
    ABA; adoption; assistive_technology; autism; catalogs; class_webpages; college; data_collection; education; health; home; humor; lessonplans; multimedia; My_Autism_School; My_pages; organization; pets; photography; politics; printables; productivity; RTI; Sensory_Integration; special_ed; teaching_resources; technology; web2.0

    However - I think I'm going to make those "lists" and start tagging more liberally ...

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  3. Oh my goodness!! Yes, USE the lists in Diigo!! I absolutely swear by them! I'm on the other end of the tagging debacle. I have way too many tags and need to go back in and consolidate them.

    What you need to realize is that folders can have "sub" folders. Sure a website may fit under the "Web2.0" moniker, but if it also easily contains content about Plurk and Twitter, then use those tags as well. Here's why - If you don't, then when you go back to find that website about Plurk, if you didn't tag it with Plurk in the first place, then you won't be able to easily find it.

    OH, and did you know that you can crosspost from Diigo to Delicious. That's what I do. I rarely use Delicious anymore though. And you can easily access your bookmarks in Diigo and search them via the toolbar. I can't imagine having my bookmarks in 3 places and actively using 3 different means of bookmarking/accessing them.

    But the lists - I LOVE THEM!!! It's a great way of finding those "sets" of links easily and quickly no matter how you've tagged them.

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  4. I spent a while creating lists the other night, and I've been slowly going through my bookmarks and adding tags ...

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