i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

(or, Why Everyone Everywhere (But Especially People In Fandom Who Read A Lot Of Fic) Should Be Using A Social Bookmarking Site; or, I Told queenofalostart I Would Write This Up) [edited to reflect changes in del.icio.us, 07.25.06]

it is no secret that i think del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site that uses tags for organization, is just about the best thing in the entire universe. it is also no secret that del.icio.us has changed my life for the better, in terms of everything from being able to find that stargate atlantis story where rodney orders a john as a mail order bride to keeping track of all the best of music lists from this year to being able to sort my thesis research out by viewing other people's bookmarks.

but still, still despite all my preaching, not all of you are using del.icio.us. why not? is it scary? do you just not bookmark enough stuff to make it worthwhile? because i really am telling you: this site will change the way you file information, and it will change the way that you use the internet. i swear.


i. getting started

to use del.icio.us, you have to create a user account. del.icio.us is case sensitive¹, so if you use capital letters in your username, you have to use them again every time you log in. just remember that for the future.

once you've created an account, you can start adding bookmarks. the first thing you want to do is either to add del.icio.us's "browser buttons" to your browser toolbar, or if you use firefox, you can get an extension to alter the top bar of your browser, which allows an unobtrusive pop up menu for bookmarking and tagging and allows you to stay on the same page with no interference.

now go to your firefox (internet explorer, netscape, safari) bookmarks. pick out some you wish you had at work when they were bookmarked at home, or at home when they were bookmarked at work. choose the "post to del.icio.us" option; depending on whether you're using the extension or the browser buttons, you will either get a pop up window or del.icio.us will automatically take you to a new window. (del.icio.us now has the option to do a full import of your browser bookmarks; i'd transferred all mine to the site before they launched it, but apparently it works pretty well.)

the firefox extension bookmarking window has four boxes: one for url, one for title, one for any notes that you'd like to include about the bookmark (summary, opinions, etc) and one for tags. the first two are required; the second two are not. but why would you use del.icio.us if you weren't going to add tags? it lets you highlight text on a page and will automatically put that in the notes section. if you use firefox and del.icio.us, use this extension. it's fantastic.

which brings us to my next part.

edited to add: lalejandra and smashsc just reminded me of something you should know: the url you bookmark matters. if you're bookmarking a livejournal page, don't bookmark the spot in the page where you left a comment - bookmark only the main url, everything up through the end of the ".html". if you have to append "?style=mine" to the bookmark (and i do, because i probably think your s2 layout is ugly and impossible to read), do that. but for god's sake, don't bookmark to comment threads unless the comment thread is what you want to save. delete "#cutid1" from the end of urls before you bookmark. keep your urls as clean as you can.

ii. tagging for dummies

you can choose to tag your bookmark however you want; it doesn't matter to me. but here are some hints i've found helpful in using del.icio.us, so maybe you will, too.

first: del.icio.us, unlike flickr, doesn't recognize multi-word tags, even inside quotation marks. tags must be all one word, or multiple words separated only by punctuation.

second: use short, to-the-point tags. except in the cases of things like "aliensmadethemdoit", which is purposefully wacky, long tags are not your friends in del.icio.us. they don't turn up a lot of other hits, they make it hard for other people to find things. "recipes", "osx", "basketball", "porn". these are good tags. "osxbasketballporn" (and if you're tagging that, oh, god, i really don't want to know) is not a good tag.

third: don't overtag. i fall victim to this myself, sometimes, especially when tagging fanfiction with multiple pairings where all the pairings are important, but i try to limit myself to five tags per link. any more and your tags are useless - you can't remember where you put something because you put it everywhere. when you bookmark something, consider the most important elements of why you want to keep it - and tag it to those elements specifically.

fourth: consider the "and ## other people" option while tagging; if you bookmark something that a lot of other people have already bookmarked, consider clicking on that link before the bookmark and seeing how they've tagged the link. it can help you to refine your vocabulary and create a set of bookmarks that aren't just useful for you - they're useful for everyone. del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site; make it social.

fifth: keep your tags clean. you can use the settings page (del.icio.us/settings/[username]/tags) to rename tags if you change your mind about something, to delete duplicate tags (i am a bad typist, so i am constantly deleting mis-typed tags), to basically keep your bookmarks clean with a global search and replace. learn it, live it, love it. CLEAN TAGS FOREVER!

iii. tagging for dummies, part two

now if you start using del.icio.us and find that you've suddenly got a lot of bookmarks and a lot of tags, there are a couple of things you can do. first, your del.icio.us page will view a lot better if you choose the "cloud" option from the tag box on the right side instead of a list.

and second, you can start to use tag bundles (del.icio.us/settings/[username]/bundle). these setting allows you to group tags together in bundles on your main page, and the bundles can then be hidden or shown depending on your often you use them. i love this option. i have several hundred tags, and i would never find anything if i couldn't bundle them together. feel free to take a look at my main page to get an idea of how i've used them; i could still stand to break the unbundled tags down a little more, but for me, it works.

iv. making del.icio.us work for you (and all your friends)

first: know the settings page (del.icio.us/settings/[username]/). learn it. live it. love it. it's the only way to customize del.icio.us into being an application that works for you. all the neatest tricks of del.icio.us? are manipulated from the settings page.

like, for example, the inbox & the network. the network is, for all intents and purposes, a friends page for del.icio.us - it's a low-level rss reader that delivers feeds straight to a page customized for you. it rocks. it's pretty much the only way i find anything these days.

using the inbox/network: there are three ways to use these pages. you can subscribe to all tags posted by a user (on the network); you can subscribe to individual tags posted by a user (on the inbox); and you can subscribe to global tags, posted by all users on del.icio.us (on the inbox).

on the top of any user's page (del.icio.us/[username]), you can add the user to your network by clicking "add [username] to my network". this can be good, if you have similar enough tastes and interests to want to see all of someone's bookmarks. this can be bad, if you don't.

which brings me to option two: subscribing to one user's individual tags. say someone posts a lot of recipes you want to see, but you're not interested in the political postings they make; on the inbox/settings page, you can subscribe to their username and their "recipes" tag. simply enter their username in the "username" box and recipes in the "tag" box.

and the final option for subscription: global tags. want to see everything tagged "sga" that's posted to del.icio.us? on the inbox/settings page, enter sga in the "tag" box and nothing in the username box. this can be dangerous: global tags can be incredibly high traffic with an extremely high rate of repetition in links, but if you don't mind that, well, interesting stuff comes through that way. drives me absolutely batty, but whatever floats your boat.

now that we've covered the inbox, here's a helpful hint for making your del.icio.us bookmarks useful: use the notes section. use it. love it. edit the page title box so that it's entirely clearly what the link is about - don't just default to whatever people have titled their pages. there's nothing in the world more frustrating than trying to find that one link you know you bookmarked but you can't remember what it was called or how you tagged it, and NONE OF YOUR NOTES SECTIONS ARE FILLED. i, ah, i totally don't speak from experience. at all. really, i swear.

feel free to check out my network if you want an idea of how it works. (you can set your network to private, if you don't want people to see whose bookmarks you're viewing. but if you add someone to your network, they can see that you're watching theirs; but only they can see that.)

besides the inbox, you have the option of viewing multiple tags on any user's page: simply separate the two tags that you'd like to see an intersection of and go, like this - all my lnks that are tagged both "tagging" and "metadata".

and finally, the "for" tag: you can tag a link "for:[username]" (minus quotes and brackets, plus an actual username) and that link will be sent directly to that user, whether or not that user is subscribed to your feed. something you think i should see about controlled vocabularies or tagging? send it along by tagging it "for:minervacat". it's awesome.

v. and finally

let me just point you to the two best del.icio.us resources out there: the several habits of wildly successful del.icio.us users, which outlines how to use del.icio.us to best advantage, and the complete del.icio.us tool collection - firefox plugins galore, integration with moveable type blogs, anything you can think of wanting, it's here.


so. now. go and bookmark, darlings, and tell me your del.icio.us usernames so i can effectively stalk you. (unless i am already stalking you, in which case, please carry on with the good links.) or don't - i am most certainly not the boss of any of you, you don't have to do what i say.

right. now if you'll excuse me, i have some slacking off at work to do.


1: case sensitive in the idea that if you use "Recipes" as a tag, the capital letter will show up and you should continue capitalizing that tag whenever you tag a new recipe; not case sensitive in that the overall search engine sees "Recipes" and "recipes" as the same thing. confusing, i know.