Yeah they arent really the same thing.  All the ways they are different hit you when you try to code around them.  I've treated them mostly the same on my site, but have found myself very limited at times because of it.  I've often wished I'd written my system differently so that it made clear what was a category and what was a tag ... but back when I was learning the difference I relied on Technorati to show me the way ... which may not have been the best idea. :-P

I like Devlon's description:  Posts belong to categories.  Tags belong to posts.

Not to get too far off topic here but the more I think about a tag extension to rss the more I love the idea.  It could even have optional links to various clouds.  Something like:

  <tag name="videobloggingweek2006">
    <link url="" href="http://www.mefeedia.com/tags/videobloggingweek2006/">http://www.mefeedia.com/tags/videobloggingweek2006/">MeFeedia</link>
    <link url="" href="http://technorati.com/tag/videobloggingweek2006">http://technorati.com/tag/videobloggingweek2006">Technorati</link>
    <link url="" href="http://fireant.tv/directory/tags/videobloggingweek2006?"> http://fireant.tv/directory/tags/videobloggingweek2006?">FireAnt</link>
    ... etc etc ...
  <tag>

I imagine a script could be written pretty easily for use in most/any/all blog systems to parse out rel=tag and add the rss info.


Anyway ... great update to mefeedia! :-)

- Dave

On 4/18/06, Devlon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 4/18/06, Charles Iliya Krempeaux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hello Peter,

On 4/18/06, Peter Van Dijck < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, why is it philosophically the wrong approach to use
> the RSS category element?

Because a category is not the same as a tag.. Tags are used
descriptively, categories are often things like "Announcements",
things that aren't really tags. I am quite wary about using tags in
the wrong way... But there is no right answer, of course.

Peter

Hmmm... I've always considered them to be exactly the same thing.  They're just labels you are labelling things with.

I think the scope is different.  Tags are granular, portions of a post can be tagged...categories are like  'containers'.  Posts belong to a category....tags belong to a post.

That's just my read on it though.

I didn't think it mattered whether you call them "tags" or "categories" or "keywords".  They all really seem the same.  (It's up to you in what kind of "meaning" you put behind them.)

The only difference I've seen with this type of stuff is whether the "creator" or the "users" tagged this stuff.  (But, what we're talking about here is "creator" tagged stuff.)


See ya


--
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc .

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
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