From Tag to Ag: NP Example

Just found Sonny Cloward's post about how he used delicious/tags to get resource content published and organized on the Web site.  Here's his post explaining how he did it.   Here is what the resource section looks like.

Therefore added thought bubbles to represent the publishing side of the tag usage.  Sonny's would be using tags to publish a resource directory to a web site. The informal is an organizational's informal sharing of resources with clients - off the official site, face-to-face, sharing the delicious url, or in person.

What I like about his approach is that he explains the work flow process:

My aim in using a set of  webs services to create content on our website was to give staff the ability to easily manage portions of the site without having to get heavily involved in the Drupal CMS interface (and editing UI).  With help from Marnie, I began to understand how I could bootstrap the RSS feeds generated by del.icio.us in order to create dynamic content on an otherwise static website, while giving control and responsibility to the staff to manage their sections of the website (and in the process freeing me up).  Here's are the tools we use and how we use them:

• I created a del.icio.us account for CERF
• I added a firefox extension to staff browsers for simple tagging capabilities (here or here)
• I worked with staff to create standard tagging policies so that each webpage (and subsection) would be associated with a standard set of tags
• I created an account with Feed Digest to convert RSS feeds generated by del.icio.us into dynamic PHP includes (rather than Javascript, so that content could be indexed by search engines).
• I cut and pasted Feed Digest generated codes into the appropriate webpages.

For example, we have an extensive resource directory in the program area of the CERF website for Prevention, Protection and Recovery and Professional Development resources. These two sections each have subcategory listings of resources; the content on all those pages is created by del.icio.us/Feed Digest bootstrapping.  In other words, this tag and this tag create the Preparedness and Recovery resource list.

So everytime a program manager comes across a valuable web resource, they simply use the Firefox plugin to add it to del.icio.us, and it is automatically added to the appropriate resource listing on CERF's website.

Comments

[Peter Campbell]

I'm doing similar stuff where I work (as I just reported this morning on Deborah's yahoo list), but I think my method has Sonny's beat, in it that it's fully automated (no cut and pasting required). I use the freely available Magpie PHP routines for parsing RSS data. So, as with Sonny, the first steps are resourcing staff to save things to Delicious with standardized keywords. But I diverge by using cron on my linux box (or you could use Windows Scheduler) to pull the RSS feed. My PHP script parses the RSS for keywords that denote categories, and sorts out the results to different sections. I'm happy to share the code, which is not all that fancy - the Magpie routines do the real work.

[underalms]

I don't think it's enough to generate long lists; nobody likes to plow through long lists.

For example, I note that of all the recovery resources listed, only a handful (four, I think) have more than 10 others claiming the link. It seems to me these are the ones that should go first.

There has to be a way not only to automate the list process but also to automate the editorial process.

Dan Prives
http://www.wheremostneeded.org

[Marshall Kirkpatrick]

If you want a high value low content stream of information, this collaborative tagging in conjunction with a human editor retagging the best items with the tag that actually gets syndicated on the site, or in a highlighted part of a site would work best. See, on a related note, my interview with Robin Good about his idea of NewsMastering (http://netsquared.org/robingood1 )

As an aside, this quote above brings up something I've been wanting to confirm for awhile. Do links served by javascript really not get indexed by search engines? But PHP ones do? That's important, but I've been unclear on wether that's really the case.