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cimoreneI've just been looking for a story that I remembered seeing go by on my delicious network something like a few months ago.
Delicious has a search function that separates results from your own account, your network, and "Everybody". But I never found the result I was looking for, because the tags that included the keywords also included punctuation.
The punctuation ruins the tags, because a search term is everything in between two spaces on delicious. That means that if you tag your story with, for example,
it might look nice in your alphabetized list of tags, but only people who type "!fandom:[neverwhere]:[marquis.de.carabas/richard."dick".mayhew]" in the Search field will be able to find the entry.
Many entries that had tags like this, of one type or another, did come up in my search results, because I tried searching first one thing and then another ("neverwhere", "fandom:neverwhere", "marquis.de.carabas", etc), and several times I hit on a word that happened to show up in the subject line or description of an entry that had been tagged with punctuation which prevented it from showing up on the earlier searches. The fact that punctuation use is by no means standardized means that there's an almost infinitely greater number of search terms to try.
Of course, there are other ways to navigate delicious than search. I often choose a fandom name or pairing term that I think is bound to be used by at least somebody, find the Recent bookmarks, click on the one which has been saved by the most people, and then check its bookmarking history to see, in the sidebar, which tags are the most popular for that fandom.
There will inevitably be, for example, "ncis:la" as well as "ncisla", and "sam/g" as well as "g/sam", but there are also completely different pages for "pinto", "chris/zach", and "quinto/pine". There's a certain amount of overlap between them, but the smaller the fandom and the smaller the total number of bookmarks, the smaller that overlap is. And even in Due South, one of the biggest fandoms, the most popular Fraser/Kowalski stories under "duesouth" are not the same as the most popular Fraser/Kowalski stories under "fraser/kowalski".
So surfing from account to account has its limitations, and is time consuming. By going back and forth from account to account and tag to tag using the more popular stories, you can probably eventually find most variations of tags, but the search function would make that all a lot simpler - if the search terms were searchable.
Of course, some people's main concern with their delicious accounts is their own reference, and they have no desire whatsoever to share them with other people. In past discussions of the site, I have often seen comments from these people loudly and sometimes angrily declaring their unconcern in the comments. It's not a situation of "the fan doth protest too much", because I certainly believe them, but it is - literally - a situation where too much protesting is emanating from them. That is to say, their unconcern is a legitimate stance, but if they use delicious only as a personal tool, I have to wonder why they feel the need to read posts about the use of delicious as a social network, let alone participate in discussions of how it can best be used by the community as a whole. If this paragraph has not been clear enough, allow me to pre-emptively state that I have no interest in the completely separate logisitical concerns involved in using delicious non-socially. No doubt some of the unsearchable bookmarks were created by those people, and though they are an inconvenience to the rest of us, there is no reason why their owners should be expected to care about that, so they need not excuse themselves.
Delicious has a search function that separates results from your own account, your network, and "Everybody". But I never found the result I was looking for, because the tags that included the keywords also included punctuation.
The punctuation ruins the tags, because a search term is everything in between two spaces on delicious. That means that if you tag your story with, for example,
!fandom:[neverwhere]:[marquis.de.carabas/richard."dick".mayhew]
it might look nice in your alphabetized list of tags, but only people who type "!fandom:[neverwhere]:[marquis.de.carabas/richard."dick".mayhew]" in the Search field will be able to find the entry.
Many entries that had tags like this, of one type or another, did come up in my search results, because I tried searching first one thing and then another ("neverwhere", "fandom:neverwhere", "marquis.de.carabas", etc), and several times I hit on a word that happened to show up in the subject line or description of an entry that had been tagged with punctuation which prevented it from showing up on the earlier searches. The fact that punctuation use is by no means standardized means that there's an almost infinitely greater number of search terms to try.
Of course, there are other ways to navigate delicious than search. I often choose a fandom name or pairing term that I think is bound to be used by at least somebody, find the Recent bookmarks, click on the one which has been saved by the most people, and then check its bookmarking history to see, in the sidebar, which tags are the most popular for that fandom.
There will inevitably be, for example, "ncis:la" as well as "ncisla", and "sam/g" as well as "g/sam", but there are also completely different pages for "pinto", "chris/zach", and "quinto/pine". There's a certain amount of overlap between them, but the smaller the fandom and the smaller the total number of bookmarks, the smaller that overlap is. And even in Due South, one of the biggest fandoms, the most popular Fraser/Kowalski stories under "duesouth" are not the same as the most popular Fraser/Kowalski stories under "fraser/kowalski".
So surfing from account to account has its limitations, and is time consuming. By going back and forth from account to account and tag to tag using the more popular stories, you can probably eventually find most variations of tags, but the search function would make that all a lot simpler - if the search terms were searchable.
Of course, some people's main concern with their delicious accounts is their own reference, and they have no desire whatsoever to share them with other people. In past discussions of the site, I have often seen comments from these people loudly and sometimes angrily declaring their unconcern in the comments. It's not a situation of "the fan doth protest too much", because I certainly believe them, but it is - literally - a situation where too much protesting is emanating from them. That is to say, their unconcern is a legitimate stance, but if they use delicious only as a personal tool, I have to wonder why they feel the need to read posts about the use of delicious as a social network, let alone participate in discussions of how it can best be used by the community as a whole. If this paragraph has not been clear enough, allow me to pre-emptively state that I have no interest in the completely separate logisitical concerns involved in using delicious non-socially. No doubt some of the unsearchable bookmarks were created by those people, and though they are an inconvenience to the rest of us, there is no reason why their owners should be expected to care about that, so they need not excuse themselves.
(no subject)
Date: 27 Oct 2009 08:39 pm (UTC)I'm surprised you missed the 'social bookmarking' aspect of it; I think it's part of the boilerplate copy around their site.
And, again, I'm well aware that some people don't wish to use it socially, I agree that that is valid, and I don't need or want to discuss that aspect of it.
(no subject)
Date: 27 Oct 2009 09:39 pm (UTC)I go directly to my subscriptions page when I do use it, but my subs. are all really popular fandoms so I never have trouble finding *hundreds* of stories to read using generic terms, I didn't even notice the "HP:harry/draco" tags stopped showing up. But for small and new fandoms that would be a pain if you are using it way more than I am, I can totally see that.
(no subject)
Date: 27 Oct 2009 09:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 27 Oct 2009 09:45 pm (UTC)I've actually spent a good portion of the day going "How did I MISS that?" Heh.
But I think part of it is that many of my closest fannish friends *still* don't use it. Despite the EVIDENCE, hello hundreds of links for certain fics! I still didn't actually pick up on the wide usage of it. I also tend to miss wank until it's long over...I'm kind of oblivious like that.
(no subject)
Date: 27 Oct 2009 09:51 pm (UTC)