Volition

I really need to get onto the del.icio.us bandwagon.

It's interesting that both del.icio.us and Epiphany (the official Gnome web browser) use the same mechanism for organising bookmarks, yet while del.icio.us seems to get praise from nearly every blogger out there, Epiphany gets almost universally flamed for it (at least on some Gnome community web sites). What gives?

I wonder if it is because bloggers are coming from having used blogging software which is poor at describing keyword metadata: Movable Type discourages more than a handful of assigned categories, WordPress isn't much better. Does Blogger and LiveJournal even support such a thing? The flexible keyword system del.icio.us uses seems like a dream compared to these blogging systems.

Conversely, it seems most hardcore web browser users are used to organising their bookmarks in a complex tree, as many levels deep as it is wide, so the lack of hierarchy in Epiphany's bookmark topics seems constraining to these people. I know it did to me when I first switched.

Having been on both sides of both fences, I think del.icio.us/Epiphany is on the right track. Having a blogging system that allowed del.icio.us-style categorisation would rock. Something else to keep in mind when I eventually roll my own.

PS: I need to read this and this and have been carrying both around in my Epiphany session for weeks now, which inspired this post. You should check them, too.