Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
What about Blogs?
Whenever i talk about searching conversations versus searching the Web in general, someone 
invariably says, “Well, blogs are informal, aren't they? and they are kind of like conversations. so 
shouldn't you use the same kind of strategy as when you search for conversations?”
that's  a  good  question.  On  one  hand,  yes,  blog  content  tends  to  be  less  formal  than  that  of 
other sites. On the other hand, the structure of a Web page makes most blogs conform to some 
sort of usual narrative: i did this, i read that, i had the following opinions. there are exceptions, 
such as stream of consciousness and fragmentary blogs, but most of them try to keep to some 
kind of recognized structure. With conversations, there's no existing Web page layout that must 
be adhered to, so conversations can become fragmented, a lot of “inside jokes” can take over, 
language use can become very informal, etc. 
the “many-to-many” element of online conversations allows for some sloppiness and informality 
that the “one-to-many” characteristic of blogs makes less viable.
Searching within tags
he theory of onions is extremely important when searching huge data sets.
Getting very narrow and speciic is paramount. With tag searching, you
have less to search. Tags are usually only a word or two. You don't have to
abandon the onion completely, but try starting a little more general than
you would normally. Say you had four levels for describing a bird:
1.
Bird
2.
Raptor
3.
Hawk
4.
Red-shouldered hawk
Level 1 is going to be too general no matter what you search. Level 4 would
be great for Web search or a news search, but might be too speciic for a tag
search. When searching tags, try to stay at Level 2 or 3. Try one-word, or at
most two-word, searches. Don't get too extensive or complicated.
Searching within tags can be boiled down to basically two ideas: simpler,
more general. Giving instruction about searching within conversations is
a little more complex.
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