Guide to tagging
Tagging is a method that can be found on many websites and even software. Wikipedia defines tags as:
A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (e.g. a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information.
With tagging, you’re attaching labels to a certain property, for example a bookmark, email or photo. The reason for this is to make it easier to find them back. To tag effectively, there are a few things to take into consideration.
Plural versus singular
If you have a picture that shows your new Playstation 3, you could take it “console”, but what if you also have a Nintendo Wii, and Xbox 360? And what if you also have photos with all of them right next to your television? Either you should always use “console”, or “consoles”. It doesn’t really matter what form you use, as long as you are consistant.
Don’t state the obvious
Flickr is a great place to host your photos. It also allows you to add tags to your photos. Imagine you have a picture taken on your vacation in Rome on March 2007. The date of the picture is already recorded in your EXIF data so you don’t have to tag the photo “march” and/or “2007″. The advanced search is already allowing you to query based on date.
Another example of mis-tagging would be the use of the tag “me” (one of the most popular tags on Flickr, in fact). The tag only refers to you and has no meaning for anyone else. My me is not the same as your me.
Get everything covered
“A picture is worth a thousand words”. That doesn’t mean you need a thousand tags! You have to make sure to tell everything about the picture to find it later in time, no more and certainly no less. Common tag categories that could be helping you are:
- people
- places
- events
For photos, this will cover the main tags. If you have a photo of the drunk uncle Josh at Christmas eve at your aunt Mary’s house in Vienna, your tags could be: “josh vienna christmas drunk”.
Now three years later, you’re at your aunt’s house again and talk with uncle Josh about that one time he got drunk. You remember it was uncle Josh, and it was at Christmas eve, and at your aunt’s house in Vienna, but not last year and also not longer than 5 years ago. Boom, within seconds you’ve found the right image.