Two Changes

I just wanted to let regular readers know that I’ve made two changes to this blog.

The first is that I’ve eliminated the use of categories on posts. I found that I was categorizing almost all posts as “general”, and that there was almost no value in maintaining such a low-entropy field. Yes, I’m well aware of the irony that, despite being an advocate of faceted search, I’m not providing any meta-data to annotate my posts. But I take what I believe to be a user-driven approach, and I can see from my logs that readers primarily visit to read my most recent posts. For those who like to browse, I encourage you to take advantage of the related posts feature, which is powered by the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The second is that I’ve retired The Noisy Community. Two years ago, I created this directory of regular readers and commenters in order to foster a sense of community. I believe it was a success, but that it has outlived its usefulness. Again based on my logs, I can see that it has been neglected for a while. So, rather than continuing to invest in maintaining it manually, I have given it an honorable discharge.

My apologies to any readers whom I’ve offended with these changes. As always, I encourage you to make suggestions — especially if you’re willing to help implement them!