Reducing the number of tags I'm using
Context
BashBlog allows specifying tags for each article I'm writing, and I'm using it extensively.
I've tried not using too many tags, but at the same time I want topics to be well covered, so it's a tricky tradeoff to find.
Current Tags
When looking at the "All Tags" page, this is what I had as of writing this (August 24, 2023):
That's 23 different tags!
If I use BB's command line to sort them and find the ones I barely use, I am getting:
% ./bb.sh tags -n
English.html 164 posts
SailfishOS.html 47 posts
Misc.html 34 posts
Running.html 32 posts
PineTime.html 30 posts
Francais.html 21 posts
Geek.html 20 posts
Tips.html 19 posts
IT.html 15 posts
Trail.html 13 posts
Emulation.html 11 posts
Amstrad.html 11 posts
Retrogaming.html 10 posts
FreeBSD.html 10 posts
Opensource.html 9 posts
Music.html 8 posts
Automation.html 6 posts
DNS.html 4 posts
Hockey.html 3 posts
Sport.html 2 posts
Radiohead.html 2 posts
Observability.html 1 post
Food.html 1 post
Clean Up
Alright, if I put the English tag apart, there's a good half of the list with
more than 10 articles.
Granted, some of my posts are tagged with multiple... tags (not quite sure how
else I can put that), but that's still decent.
The bottom list though is interesting:
- DNS: only 4 articles, but that's a topic I want to keep as separate, to find it more easily, and I am planning on writing more about it in the future,
- Hockey: not sure it deserves its own tag, when it could fall under "Sport" with a wider variety of articles
- Radiohead: even though I'm a huge fan of RH, I could probably move that under "Music".
- Observability: only one article - a no brainer, I'll move that under "IT".
- Food: only one article, but I'm planning on writing more about it, and the other tags would be too large, so I'll keep it.
Result
After removing the Hockey, Radiohead and Observability tags, I'm down to 20 tags, with the bottom list being:
DNS.html 4 posts
Sport.html 3 posts
Food.html 1 post
This looks a lot better!
Moving Forward
I'll revisit the list on a regular basis and see what I can tweak - e.g. I feel I could probably improve things around gaming, since I have 3 tags related to this: Amstrad, Emulation and Retrogaming.
How about the "English" Tag?
Since I mostly blog in English, I think it makes more sense to ditch this tag, and keep the "Français" one when I blog in French.
I've removed it on the older posts, so I am now at 19 tags!
Tags: Misc