del.icio.us 101

[arduinna]

At the Muskrat Jamboree (muskratjamboree) in late March, I offered to give a couple people a tutorial in using del.icio.us, which came up as a way to find things in small/rare fandoms (although it's also great for big fandoms). We didn't really have time at the con, so I figured I'd write something up.

If you're reading this and wondering what all the del.icio.us fuss is about, here's very fast overview, before I get into the tutorial part.

The basics

At it's most basic, del.icio.us is... bookmarks. *g*

The bookmarks are spiffy, mind you -- they sit on the del.icio.us servers, not on your computer, so they're available to you anywhere, if you have a browser and a connection; no more worries about "oh, crap, I bookmarked that at work. At my last job. CRAP."

There's also a section to add notes or a description to any bookmark, which is really cool (you can put a quote from a story, for example, to remind yourself about it). And best of all, there are tags, which make finding things so freaking much easier than trying to scroll through 800 random bookmarks that you forgot to stick in folders, or figuring out which folder you stuck something into. Personally, I think it's cool just on that level, but trust me: there's more.

The cool stuff

Okay, now on to the real reasons for fans to use del.icio.us: it will bring you stories and vids and suchlike that you might not find on your own. There are two main ways to do this: the Network, and the Subscriptions.

Network

The network is sort of like a Friends list. You find people whose bookmarks interest you, and you add them to your network, and then any time you go look at your network page, you see all the bookmarks from all the people in your network.

Subscriptions

The subscriptions are... not like anything on LJ, I don't think. *g* They're how you track different subjects across the entire del.icio.us network, by subscribing to tags. I use these for pretty much all my fandoms, but they're crucial for small fandoms, so you don't miss anything. You can subscribe to any tag you can think of; if someone uses that tag on a bookmark, you'll see it show up on your subscriptions page.

This is really the strongest feature for fans, because it gives you access to everyone's tags, regardless of whether you know them, or whether they're really in the fandom or just doing a flyby one-shot bookmark on something.

The extras

There are some other cool features, too.

search

del.icio.us comes with a search, which lets you search either all of del.icio.us, just your own bookmarks, or the web. I don't use this often, but when I need it, it's a lifesaver (usually when I remember a keyword in a story that I neglected to use as a tag, but stuck in the description somewhere).

Links for...

del.icio.us lets you send links to specific people, as long as they also have a del.icio.us account. You just tag something for:username and it shows up in a private section called "links for you" in their account. No one else (not even the person you tagged) can see that you used that tag; the for: tag is only visible to the person who actually uses it.

privacy

del.icio.us allows you to save things privately, so that only you can see them, and it gives you a little indicator on any privately saved link so you know it's safe. This is fabulous.

Checking things out

If you want to see what someone's bookmarks look like, mine are here:

http://del.icio.us/arduinna

and you can see my network and subscriptions here:

http://del.icio.us/network/arduinna

http://del.icio.us/subscriptions/arduinna

If all of that sounds good and you're an intrepid sort who likes to figure things out completely on your own, go get an account at del.icio.us, and start bookmarking and tagging. Yay!

More info

If you want a more info, read on below for a basic tutorial, or go to my website for a far more detailed version.

The tutorial

This assumes that you're comfortable with web-based services and don't want/need much in the way of specific, detailed instructions, but prefer general pointers to major features so you can figure the details out on your own.

In case the basics aren't enough, or if people want a more information about specific things as they go along, I put a far more detailed version up on my website, with step-by-step instructions on a lot of things, and a lot of screencaps. Each section here is also linked to the more detailed/expanded section on my website.

Note: I use Firefox, so if you're in a different browser there may be some slight differences in the interface, etc.

Getting an account

Accounts are free, and easy to set up: just go to del.icio.us and register. In the second step, it will ask you to install buttons for your browser; you want to do this. If you have Firefox, make sure you get the Firefox buttons/extension, which is a bit more useful than the standard del.icio.us buttons (there should be a link on the page for it; if not, go here to install it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1532).

del.icio.us will also offer you a Button Tutorial, which boils down to:

The square multi-colored button will take you directly to your del.icio.us account page (or the del.icio.us homepage if you're not logged in).

The tag-shaped button called "tag" will let you bookmark and tag whatever page you're on.

Bookmarks

Creating bookmarks is pretty straightforward: click the Tag button, and fill in the popup. del.icio.us will automatically fill in the URL and add the page's title to the description field.


(click for larger version)

The only advice I have is to change the description of your bookmark to something meaningful if need be (I beg you, please do this), and to tag like a madwoman -- the more tags, the better organized things are, and the easier it is to find things.

NOTE: One very spiffy feature of del.icio.us is that if you highlight some text before you click the Tag button, it will put that text into the "notes" field, saving you some time. One slightly less spiffy feature is that the notes field has a character limit of about 255 characters, and will cut off anything beyond that when you hit save on your bookmark. Think pithy.

Tags

You cannot over-tag something. There are no limits in the system, so go to town; the more tags you use on something, the easier it is to find later (and the more information you give other people about your bookmark). You can globally (within your account) rename or delete any tags you screw up or accidentally duplicate, so you don't need to worry about making mistakes.

NOTE: Tags are space-separated, not comma-separated like they are on LJ. If you tag something "invisible man", you've given it two separate tags, "invisible" and "man". You can either combine words ("invisibleman") or use periods, hyphens, or underscores to keep them as one word ("invisible.man", "invisible-man", "invisible_man"). Other punctuation is also allowed, including slashes, which makes tracking pairings much easier.

"Bundling" or organizing tags

del.icio.us offers something called "bundles", which effectively work like bookmark folders, with a couple of differences: 1) you can't have any sub-bundles, but 2) any given tag can be in as many bundles as you want. There's also no way to list the bundles in anything but strict alphabetical order (which takes into account uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols, as well as the alphabet itself).

There's a "bundle tags" link at the bottom of the right-hand box on your main bookmarks page; click that to start organizing your tags. Don't create a bundle unless you already have a tag to put in it, though -- the system automatically deletes any empty bundles, so you'll just have to recreate it later.



My bundles are perhaps a tad over-organized. *kof* I have a lot, and the strict alphabetical order was starting to drive me crazy, so I forced "sub-bundles" to keep things together by using specific words and symbols in front of things.

Using tags to find bookmarks

This is pretty straightforward as far as it goes. One thing that a lot of people miss, though, is that you can sort using multiple tags.

Click on the tag you want; it'll bring up everything tagged with that term, plus a new box of "related tags", each with a number, a plus sign, and the tag name (e.g., 23 + slash). The plus sign and the tag name are each clickable, and do different things.

If you click the new tag name, you get a list of every one of your bookmarks that has that tag (as a new top-level sort, in other words).

If you click the plus sign instead, you get a list of bookmarks that contain both your original sort term and the new sort term -- which will match the number that was next to the plus sign (23 + slash will bring up 23 stories that are tagged both slash and your original term).

From there, you'll get another new box of related tags, and you can continue to refine your search.

Using tags to directly share bookmarks with someone

There's a very cool feature on del.icio.us that lets you send bookmarks straight to someone else: the for:username tag. Once you have people in your network, del.icio.us will automatically offer you a list of their names to select on the bookmark popup, but you can also just type in the name of anyone with an account on del.icio.us. The "links for you" link on their front page will go bold and tell them the number of new links that have been sent to them, and they can click through and check them out.

NOTE: You can both save a bookmark privately and tag it for:username, and no one but you and that person will be able to see that bookmark.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions let you keep track of all bookmarks across the entire del.icio.us network tagged with a given term. Use multiple variants to be sure you've caught everything (e.g., I'm subscribed to invisibleman, invisible_man, invisible-man, invisible.man, iman, i-man, i_man, and i.man, because I want everything I can find about Invisible Man). To see everything across the entire del.icio.us network, fill in the tag field but leave the username blank.

You can also do a custom subscription to a given person's tags, if you don't want to see everything they bookmark. This is where you'd use the username and the tag name together.

Once you've added things, your subscription page will show you a list of all the bookmarks containing those tags, in chronological order. To see just the results for one tag, click that tag in your subscription list.

Network

The network is for people whose bookmarks interest you to a large degree. You can type their name into the "add" box on your network page, or you can go to their bookmarks and click the "add [name] to your network" link. If there's someone who bookmarks one or two types of things you really want to see, but you don't particularly care about the rest, do a custom subscription instead of networking them.

Once you've added people, your network page will show you a list of everything they've bookmarked, in chronological order.

On your network page, you'll also see a box on the right containing "your network" and "your fans"; the first is people whose bookmarks you're watching, the second is people who are watching your bookmarks. If it's a mutual relationship, there's a little swirly arrow next to the name. You can take anyone out of your network by clicking the symbol next to their name -- when you hover over it, it turns into a bright red x for delete. You can add anyone in your fans by clicking on the plus sign next to their name.

Privacy

Although del.icio.us is set up to be public, social bookmarks, there are ways to keep things private as well.

In Settings, go to "private saving" (under the Bookmarks heading), and check the box that says "allow private saving of bookmarks". This will give you an option to make any bookmark private, so that no one but you can see it.

NOTE: If you import your existing bookmarks from a browser, all of those bookmarks will automatically be set to private, and you'll need to go through and set them each to "share" individually if you want them to be public.

You can also make your network private (both who you're watching, and who's watching you), by going to Settings, then "network privacy" (under the People heading), and unchecking the "allow other people to see your network" box. You can still network people, and they can still network you, it's just not visible on your page at all.

Egoboo

Oh, c'mon, egoboo is the other big reason to use del.icio.us, and everyone knows it. *g*

One thing you can do right off the bat to give people access to more of your stuff is go to Settings, Edit Profile, and add your name and URL (website, LJ, whatever). The name will show up on your del.icio.us page as a clickable link to whatever URL you input (mine is set up like this).

But the best thing, of course, is seeing how many people are tagging your stuff, and what, if anything, they're saying about it. There are two main ways to do this.

- Tag your own work and save it privately (or not, your choice), so you can see if anyone else ever tags it (by way of the "saved by xx people" feature).
- Type your name into the search bar, see what pops up

Once you have a bookmark to look at, you can click on "saved by xx people" if it's there, and that will bring you to a page listing everyone who's tagged that URL, what tags they used on it, and what notes they added, if any.

NOTE: del.icio.us grabs the exact URL of the page being bookmarked. This is spiffy, except it's not entirely accurate for giving a complete count on how many people have actually bookmarked particular content.

Regular websites can be under "http://www.sitename.xxx" or "http://sitename.xxx", as two separate things.

LJ is even more split up, with lj-cuts, ?style=mine, ?format=light, and whatnot. People tend to tag things on the fly, without noticing what URL they're on, so things can show up in a variety of ways. For instance, all of these link to the exact same entry (MJ's panel schedule), and any one of them may be what someone uses on del.icio.us:

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?format=light

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?style=mine

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1?format=light

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html#cutid1?style=mine

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?mode=reply

http://community.livejournal.com/muskratjamboree/14664.html?thread=206664#t206664

etc.

So if you're checking to see how many people have tagged your story, try a few variants to get a more accurate count.

Advanced stuff

The basic del.icio.us interface and functions are enough for many people, but if you want more, there's lots more out there. I've only used some of these, though, since I'm mostly happy with the basic version.

del.icio.us linkbacks -- this is a bookmarklet that you drag onto your toolbar. You click it on any given page, and it pops up a small window listing all the people who've tagged that page and what they've said about it. Useful for egoboo (it's faster than checking the "saved by" links) and for getting a feel for what sorts of tags people are using for something. Really, it's very very handy -- when it works. Which it isn't, as I write this. Still, it's worth getting, because eventually it should be working again.

Bringing del.icio.us recs to your webpage in a clean, nice-looking, automatically updated format: http://yuletidetreasure.org/yuletide_on_delicious.txt, created by astolat. This was originally meant to make tracking Yuletide recs easier, but it's flexible and can handle multiple terms, so you can use it for any tag you want. The file comes with instructions on how to use it; you leave the cgi alone and just change the html and css to what you want. I'd never seen cgi coding in my life before using this, and I managed. *g* If you want to see what it looks like in action, here are a few versions currently in use, starting with mine:

http://www.trickster.org/arduinna/recs/quickrecs.cgi

http://intimations.org/fanfic/delicious_recs.cgi

http://www.hovenweep.org/~xenacryst/delicious.php (a php version based on astolat's script)

There's an impressive list of add-ons and tools here .

murklins has gone through that list and put together a post of things she uses to, as she puts it, "tart up del.icio.us", with explanations, here.

If you're on Firefox and you have Greasemonkey installed, there are a lot of scripts available to tweak del.icio.us, here: http://userscripts.org/tags/del.icio.us.

If you want to have multiple accounts and an easy way to post to all of them (again, from Firefox), try this: http://delicious.mozdev.org/index.html.


And again, if that wasn't enough information, I put a far more detailed version up on my website, covering more features, and with step-by-step instructions on a lot of things, including screencaps.

Comments

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

This is fabulous!

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

*beam* Thanks!

[melina123.livejournal.com]

Something I recently discovered re subscriptions (and maybe everyone knows this already) is that you can make a single subscription to two or more tags. For example /jack+ianto will sub you to posts tagged both "jack" and "ianto".

I don't tag pairings, I tag characters... which is probably unusual, but I find it easier to use the + buttons than have separate tags for all the potential possibilites (especially considering that jack/ianto is a different tag than ianto/jack).

(The + buttons and "related links" panel may have been the most important thing about del.icio that it took me forever to figure out. I am slow that way.)

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

For example /jack+ianto will sub you to posts tagged both "jack" and "ianto".

dude! I did not know that. That is seriously cool, and I must add it to the psycho huge website version of this.

(I also didn't know, before starting this up, that you could just type a tag [or tag+tag, etc.] into the little empty box at the top of your/someone's page, and it would work like clicking a tag. So cool.)

I don't tag pairings, I tag characters

Heh; in a lot of cases, I tag both. There are some characters where I know I'll want to read stories about that character regardless of genre, so it's easier to add the character tag across the board. But if there's a pairing, I want to know that right off the bat, too (and I figure it makes it easier for people subbing to pairings to find stuff).

And yeah, the + buttons and related tags panel are just hugely important, and at least when I started using it, there was no information anywhere about them. I figured out the + buttons totally by accident. *shakes head*

[melina123.livejournal.com]

But if there's a pairing, I want to know that right off the bat, too (and I figure it makes it easier for people subbing to pairings to find stuff).

I tend to agree, and knowing that's how most people do it, if there was an easy way to go back and add a tag to dozens of posts, I'd probably do it, at least for Torchwood, but there so is not! I wish del.icio.us would add some tools to make mass-tagging possible. I know you can rename and delete, but you can't add, and it seems to me a real pain.

I figured out the + buttons totally by accident. *shakes head*

Me too -- mostly trial and error, thinking there just *had* to be a way to filter posts by more than one tag.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

I wish del.icio.us would add some tools to make mass-tagging possible.

Oh, man, me too. I've had to go back through and expand on some tags, and it is pain.ful.

[melina123.livejournal.com]

::nods::

Btw, thanks for the link to the php version of the recs script -- with a little help from xenacryst, I finally have it working (http://mediafans.org/php-delicious/melina_recs.php)! Though I think I'm going to keep the manually updated one (http://mediafans.org/melina/recs.html), too, since it's categorized a bit better.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay! I'd gone to check yours and saw that you'd wound up doing a more manual version.

I tend to think of mine as an adjunct to my manually updated ones anyway -- I like being able to be more expansive, and move things around however I want. *g*

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

You really are scary. You know that, right? [g]

Since you got me to get a delicio account, I'm afraid it's pretty much a huge mess. I go look at yours sometimes just to see how the other half lives.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

You really are scary. You know that, right? [g]

Sadly, yes, I do. *g*

Since you got me to get a delicio account, I'm afraid it's pretty much a huge mess. I go look at yours sometimes just to see how the other half lives.

aw!

I can't help it; for all that I am constantly surrounded by self-produced clutter, I'm a compulsive organizer once I get something like that started. *g* Tags! More tags! And del.icio.us is where I find almost everything I read these days, so. *hugs it*

[ursamajor]

Here via the metafandom delicious :) Just wanted to comment on your more-extended version, since you mentioned the 255-character limit in the note field - that's one of my pet peeves! Luckily, there's a Greasemonkey script called the delicious Anal-Retentive Character Counter, which keeps track of how many characters you've typed or pasted into the note field. If you go over 255, it will bold the number, and it reminds you that your notes will be cut off when you try to click post while that number is higher than 255. It's especially useful in that it holds onto all of the characters while you're editing, so you can snip a quote down in a useful manner, rather than having it cut off arbitrarily.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Here via the metafandom delicious :)

Wow, that was fast! (Also, I am strangely amused at this post making it to the metafandom delicious, heh.) (Which I didn't know existed, so thank you for the pointer!)

I really need to install Greasemonkey and grab some of those scripts. When I was poking around for this, the character counter was verrrry tempting. *g* I didn't go into much detail here about what scripts are available because there are just so many, but I'm really glad to see a mention of this here, because the character counter is so very *useful*.

[melina123.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's an awesome script! Esp. for recs, which tend to get wordy :)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is full of terrific information.

For example, I had no idea about clicking on the plus sign to find related tags. I thought there was no way to combine tag searches. Thank you so much!

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome! That plus sign, man -- crucial, and there's just no info out there about it. It makes things *so* much easier!

[ratcreature]

Oh, this is nifty. I never used the subscription feature before and tried just now. However subscribing to tags with a "!" in them seems to mess things up? (like say "slave!sheppard" and the like). Do you know if an escape character for the "!" is necessary or something?

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting. I don't use the "!" in tags, so I hadn't thought to check that out. I see what you mean; it looks like it's perfectly okay to use in one's own tags, and it works as a sort/search term within one person's tags if you click on it, but for the overall system (either in subscriptions, or clicking "all" at the top of search/sort page), it works more as a plus sign, giving you bookmarks that contain both "slave" and "sheppard", but not a single "slave!sheppard".

Which is... kinda freaky.

It looks like using a slash, either forward or back, is the best way of picking up anything tagged with a !; "slave\john" and "slave/john" both pull up identical lists, which include bookmarks tagged "slave!john". They just also pull up anything with both "john" and "slave" in the tags somewhere.

I'll poke around more and see if I can come up with anything else that will work, hopefully more efficiently.

[ratcreature]

The thing is, when I tried a combination with "!" it would work like an OR it seemed. I mean, I got bookmarks that just had "slave" in the tags and unless I hallucinated, "slave!sheppard" for example also gave stories tagged "sheppard/mckay" that had neither a single "sheppard" nor a single "slave" let alone both. However if I subscribe to "slave-john" that wil also give me "slave!john" so I just stick with that. I wish they'd document the way special characters work. Maybe it's those that havespecial meaning in regular expressions or something. In my own tag I have a couple with an exclamation mark, but switched to hyphens mostly when I noticed that "!" sometimes caused trouble in searches.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I really wish they had documentation on what is and isn't possible, but if any exists I haven't been able to find it. I'm glad that "slave-john" works, at least!

(And yeah, you're right, it was working as an "or" operator, I was misreading things.)

[amireal.livejournal.com]

Hey, can I pick your brain for my Fandom Book Club (http://del.icio.us/fandombookclub) project?

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Sure! What's up?

[amireal.livejournal.com]

Well there's a couple of things.

I'm trying to work out the best way for OTHER readers to get their lists in. And while I am definitely thinking about roping someone in to do the organizing. I was wondering if subscribing to a tag, or having people send their links directly to the account is better. Complete with proper tagging so I don't spend hours doing this project that I love.

I was also wondering how well it handled dupe URLs. Like, if someone sends me the url of a book I already have (which is another logistical thing really), will that cause a burb in the system I don't know about?

And-- do you have good tag suggestions? I'm all wobbily on my page delineations. And eventually I want people to put their own tagged rankings. But I want each person's to be separately searchable. So say I have a book at four stars, someone else has it at 3. So that someone can search based on a reader's tastes that most matches theirs.

I hope that made sense. *facepalms*

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Hee! It made sense. *g* I am not up on the book club thing, though, so am having to sort of think my way around this. Having done a fast scan of your LJ and the delicious link you gave me, it looks like you're doing this:

on LJ, tracking and reviewing the books you read, no links

on delicious, tracking books you've read by amazon links, with generally descriptive tags (genre, author, series, reader, booklength)

And I take it you want to make this an overall fandom bookclub thing, where many people can collect their links so people have a centralized place to go find stuff.

Close enough?

Given that, I think having people send links directly is better than subscribing to a tag; that way you're not going to accidentally add something that maybe doesn't belong (if someone who isn't participating just happens to use the same tag).

Duplicate URLs shouldn't be a problem; when you click to save/tag the link, it'll bring up the already-existing bookmark, and you can just add the new tags -- I just sent you a private link of a copy of Dresden Book 2 from your list, with a different tag, so you can see (but don't add me, I haven't actually read the book *g*). (... I should have waited to send it till I finished this. Sorry if I confused you!)

(The annoying thing about clicking "save this" is that it brings you through to the tagged page when you finish filling in what you want, which I'd completely forgotten about and will have to add to the tutorial somewhere.)

The one maybe-problem I can see is if Amazon has multiple copies of a book, and different people use different URLs for the same thing. But everything should show up on the sort-results page if it's properly tagged, so that shouldn't be too big a deal.

For tagging, I like the system you've already started up -- it's very clear. They make a good minimum-allowed set, useful and easy to remember (although you may need to add the reader:username one, if people don't want to tag their own personal bookmarks like that). The star system should be workable; have people use just stars in their own bookmarks, then you can add username: in front of it when you pull it in to fandombookclub.

The book length -- I admit, I boggled for a minute when I saw those, because I'm so used to thinking in word counts these days! *g* But broad page-count categories seem pretty reasonable to me; I looked at them and the next thing that occurred was >750, and then >1000 (for certain "I am too good for editors" authors. ahem.) The only narrower length category I could see being useful is >150, for really slim books/children's books.

For other tags... hm. Maybe reviewer:username , if people want to use the notes section to point to reviews? (Tough if there are multiple reviews, given the character limit, but there should be room to point to at least a couple.)

It looks like a good chunk of the books there currently are also tv shows; maybe a tv or media tag to indicate that? (Or tv:showname, maybe, to be consistent.)

The other tags I'm coming up with are just basic descriptive things that will come up as people go along anyway -- different genres, nonfic, illustrated, children's, young_adult, etc.

I'm not sure any of that was helpful, but I'm happy to keep trying. *g* Either here, or drop me a note at arduinna at trickster dot org.

[amireal.livejournal.com]

You about got it! \o/ Eventually I want to have readers be able to link to their reviews. So possibly, as you suggested a 'revier:reader' tag. Though if I want them to put all the same tags that books have, I dunno.

I also pondered the duplicate book/different URL and if I'd just translate over to the original URL or what.

Also, it doesn't let me edit the link from the page if you send me the same link. Hmm.

The only thing about book length is that I thin what I have set up now puts a LOT of books into the one category and part of me wants to dilineate a little smaller. Just in that page number area. And I totally was going to do a below 150 one for kid books.

ooh media. Yes. I was also thinking of tagging author home pages, listings of large series and reading order. Etc.

THANK YOU FOR BEING TALKY ABOUT THIS. I know some people want to help, but I think unless you've played around with the site a lot more, like you or I, it's tough to work out details.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Dude, I am so happy to be talky about this. *G*

Yeah, I can see what you mean about book length; maybe go in 100-page increments instead? >150, >250, >350...

And oh, oh, you need this site, if you don't already have it: http://www.scifan.com/ (http://www.scifan.com/). Lists of SF/F books by author, series, and theme. The author pages give a bibliography, a list of series names (clickable to get series order and descriptions), recurring themes, and links to other sites. This was invaluable when I was putting all my sff books into my Library Thing account. It looks like they've done a good amount of updating since I was there last, too.

[norah.livejournal.com]

This is awesome, thanks! I've never used the subscriptions feature, and I already found a few stories in my rare pairings and fandoms that I hadn't seen before. Thank you!

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay! Subscriptions *rock* -- and they're just fab for tiny fandoms.

[coaldustcanary.livejournal.com]

Here from metafandom and I have to admit...

I love you. <3

I have been poking at del.icio.us a bit of late and felt a bit confused by it all, and you have Cleared It All Up wonderfully.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Aw! Thank you!

And I'm really glad to hear that this helped clear things up; I love del.icio.us (obviously *g*), but man, the interface is not intuitive at all.

[yourlibrarian]

Very handy, thank you.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear it, thanks!

[livrelibre.livejournal.com]

This tutorial is so tasty that it's covered in awesomesauce! I love del.icio.us and use it a lot and picke dup some new tricks with this.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Hee! Thanks for letting me know; I'm really pleased that this has been helpful for people. :)

[delurker.livejournal.com]

Ooh, shiny! Thanks for this.

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

My pleasure!

[cloudlb.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your very detailed and thorough del.icio.us tutorial. I try to get people interested in it, and I think they are put off by the bare-bones interface; and the way the organization is left totally up to the user. And unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of info on how to use it.

I love the D! I use it a lot, and not just for fandom. It amuses me that we fanfiction people are right up there at the top of D users--along with the geeks. You notice that over half of the D tags are computer related? I've also started tagging recipes in an organized way, because

I also am fascinated by the various ways people tag their stuff. There are people who tag every story. I tend to only tag groups of stories, unless they are very favorite ones. (You can see my page if you want, user name Violet.West.) I'm constantly reviewing the tags for my particular interest that day.

Thanks again!

[aka-arduinna.livejournal.com]

Thanks! My secret (and incredibly well-hidden) goal is to get all of fandom on delicious, to make my life easier. *g* It's just so bloody unintuitive; it took me months of poking cautiously at other people's bookmarks to even decide to get my own account, and then there was the fun of figuring things out blind. So I was sort of glad that I didn't get the chance to do an in-person tutorial, so I could write up something for future reference.

I'm surprised the ratio of computer geeks isn't higher, actually; I think delicious started out mostly with them. But I'm glad to hear fandom is making inroads! It's really just perfect for us.

I'll be checking out your tags!