Dropping Johnny Decimal: Leaning Into Tags and Search
I am dropping the use of the Johnny Decimal categorization framework on this site. For just over a year, I used it to govern and organize the tags used between the posts and pages here.
I found the decimal system too restrictive and better suited for physical, 2D space. It was, after all, built for and modeled on a physical filing system where everything would have a single place. I’m operating this site as a digital, multidimensional space that I want to optimize for networking between posts - I want more triadic closure. Tags are a better taxonomy for that: they overlap and every post can occupy space in more than one. I also want to lean in to making new tags for more complex/multifaceted topics like individual persons.
Similarly, I’ve dropped the reliance on the old site index (and source/date indices) in favor of search (via attributes: tags, date, author, source, etc.). It’s still accessible; it just lists the tags. Things won’t be as “browsable” but they are now much more “discoverable” and “navigable” and generally linked together. Posts still have links to their siblings by source/date/etc. but it’s now powered by the search page alone. I think this better leverages the actual organization/information attached to each, while actually encouraging more exploration.
Future
Soon, I want to use LLMs to help me find the blind spots in my tagged network. I want to build:
- an LLM bot to add tags to my old posts (especially when a new tag is created)
- an LLM bot that identifies low-usage tags and suggests removing it