Fwd: Tags versus categories

[John Russell <jjrussell gmail com>]

On 11/10/05, Michaël Van Dorpe <michael vandorpe gmail com> wrote:
> On 11/9/05, James Carroll <jfc001 gmail com> wrote:
> >   What is the difference between a tag and a category?
>
> One of the differences I can think of, is that, if you double click a
> picture, you will see the picture with, at the bottom of the screen
> (next to the comment area), a bar with the icons of the tags that
> apply to that certain picture.
>
> E.g. for a picture of your dad and his dog, you would see the icon
> "dad", "dog" and maybe some others for the event, location, etc...
>
> If you remove the distinction between tags and categories, you might
> see the following tag icons: "people", "dad", "animals", "dog", etc...
>
> Of course, you could solve this problem by only showing the lowest
> tags in the tag hierarchy that apply. E.g. in the above example, that
> would be "dad" and "dog".
>
> In that case, if you have a picture with someone you don't know with
> his dog, the following tags would apply: "people", "dog", "animals".
> Here the displayed tags would be "people" and "dog".
>
> I hope this is not too confusing...

Honestly, this is the clearest explanation I've heard and it makes
sense.  i think that having a different object ( categories and tags )
for such similar concepts will never be clear to users.  Your lowest
tag approach makes a lot of senes and only having one object ( tags )
would be easier all around.