The Complete Guide to My LiveJournal Tags, Part 1: The LiveJournal Centric Ones
LiveJournal didn't have tags when I started this journal, and while I adopted them quite quickly I never went back and tagged the old posts that predated the functionality. Nearly five years ago, I stated that I wanted to tag all my old posts that didn't have them. While I've done that in bits and pieces while I went looking for specific posts, there are still a large number of untagged early posts.
As a way of productively procrastinating from that somewhat intimidating project, I thought I'd define and categorize all my tags are as of this moment. This is admittedly probably not of much interest to anyone but myself and the as of yet unborn grad students who are assigned to read through at some point in the far future, but it is MY journal, so why not? Without further undue, here is the the complete guide to my tags. Of course, with 165 tags, there is going to take a few posts. It could be worse though; I deleted four tags just while writing this post, which helps counter the one I created for this content, thereby pushing the total to 166!
Oddly Specific Meta Tags About the Contents of a LiveJournal Post - 18 Tags
A bunch of tags about specific kinds of LiveJournal content, mostly.
livejournal - The granddaddy of all meta tags.
locked - Very occasionally, I lock a post to friends only. It was rare enough to justify its own tag.
personal - Even more occasionally, I post something just for myself.
video - For some reason every time I made a post with an embedded video or a link out to a video, I tagged them with video. It's mostly habit at this point.
photos - I embed photos much more rarely than video, but when I link out to ones I've posted I use this tag.
pre-recorded - When I started doing regular series, I'd write posts in advance and post them when I was going to be traveling. Those posts were tagged as pre-recorded. Nowadays, I realize that's terribly security practice, and more to the point virtually all of my posts are written in advance, so this is a useless tag that will likely disappear one day.
quotes - Used if I drop a quote into a post, be it brief or extensive.
lyrics - Basically the same as quotes, but for song lyrics. I should probably just combine this into quotes, honestly.
linkage - This tag means I wrote a post that specifically links out to some interesting thing on the internet.
meme - You'd never know to look at it nowadays, but back in the day LiveJournal had memes going around just like any other social media. I used this tag when I indulged, which wasn't often.
potpourri - A long time ago my posts rambled all over the place on assorted topics. Some of those posts got tagged with potpourri, and if I ever do go back and tag the old stuff I suspect this tag will be used a lot.
by request - Sometimes someone asks me for a specific post, usually a recipe. It's apparently good for my ego to tag those.
contest - I also did a few contests back in the day, mostly about guessing how much email would be in my work account after a trip. Definitely another bad security practice.
help me - I've got questions and/or needs that I would throw out to my friends. This is used a lot less now that so few people are on LiveJournal.
buy my stuff - A very specific kind of help me, but yeah, I used to have so many local friends on here that I would post stuff I was selling.
original work - Reserved for when I write something that might technically be publishable. Typically, this is poetry of dubious quality.
this weekend - way back in the day I'd occasionally post stuff I was doing the next weekend so people could consider joining me. This sometimes even happened.
tags - Created just for this post, as I'm sure I'll need to define tags in the future beyond this series.
Tags Describing Gigantic Yearly Series - 11 Tags
For many years I've tried to do an ongoing series. These would typically but not always have a post every Sunday. These have usually started in January and gone until completion, or collapse.
13yl - In 2010 I made a tentative pass at reviewing every movie I'd seen since my lists started back in 1998. It collapsed pretty quickly.
states - My 2011 series covered every state I'd been to, and was also used on some older "meme" style state lists, with periodic updates since then as I've visited new states.
songbook - Inspired my the success of the 2011 series and by a coworker asking for it, I did a songbook of my entire life in 2012, Nick Hornby style.
fun in the movie theater 2013 - Buoyed by two years of successes, in 2013, I tried to summarize every movie I saw that year, an effort that collapsed under the weight of how many movies I'd seen. By my 12th and final post I was already 16 movies behind!
galapagos 2013 - In December 2013 I went to the Galapagos Islands with my family. In 2014, I turned that into a comparatively short trip diary.
baseball stadium tour - After getting off to a good start back in the early 00s, I started putting serious effort into visiting every baseball stadium in 2012. By 2015 I was far enough along to justify a series just about this, with later addendums as warranted.
european sabbatical 2015 - I went on a month-long trip to Europe in August & September 2015. In 2016, I wrote about it at length.
As far as I can tell, there was no series in 2017.
last weekend 2018 - In 2018 I tried to write about my weekend every single week. This was an interesting experiment in short term memory.
author - In 2019 I wrote about some of my favorite authors at length.
in my mothers kitchen - In 2020 I used the vehicle of my mother's cooking to look at my childhood from another angle.
PKT25 - Ongoing as of this writing, I'm writing a not-so-brief history of my time as an active brother of the Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta fraternity.
Year in Review - 7 tags
My longest-standing feature is yearly summaries of many of the forms of media that I have consumed over course of a year. Naturally, they have tags all their own.
year in review - Tagged on literally every year in review post I've ever done. I'm not sure why, as the subcategories are far more useful. I can probably kill this one.
year in review - cinema - Every big yearly movie summary I've done. This started in 2003, but I've filled in some gaps here and there in the past, or elaborated on incomplete summaries from prior years.
year in review - concert - I started doing concert summaries in 2003, but unlike cinema, mostly got them right the first time.
year in review - books - The books came along in 2007.
year in review - television - Yearly round ups of television only came around last year. Before that I didn't watch tv. I blame the pandemic, my daughter and my wife, in that order.
mid year review - Since 2009, I've done a "the year so far" in terms of numbers of books/movies/concerts/LJ posts etc, which is pretty consistently on June 30.
baseball game stats - In 2011 I summarized every MLB game I had been to up to that point. I've updated it most years since as a sort of "baseball season in review."
36 tags down, 130 to go!
As a way of productively procrastinating from that somewhat intimidating project, I thought I'd define and categorize all my tags are as of this moment. This is admittedly probably not of much interest to anyone but myself and the as of yet unborn grad students who are assigned to read through at some point in the far future, but it is MY journal, so why not? Without further undue, here is the the complete guide to my tags. Of course, with 165 tags, there is going to take a few posts. It could be worse though; I deleted four tags just while writing this post, which helps counter the one I created for this content, thereby pushing the total to 166!
Oddly Specific Meta Tags About the Contents of a LiveJournal Post - 18 Tags
A bunch of tags about specific kinds of LiveJournal content, mostly.
livejournal - The granddaddy of all meta tags.
locked - Very occasionally, I lock a post to friends only. It was rare enough to justify its own tag.
personal - Even more occasionally, I post something just for myself.
video - For some reason every time I made a post with an embedded video or a link out to a video, I tagged them with video. It's mostly habit at this point.
photos - I embed photos much more rarely than video, but when I link out to ones I've posted I use this tag.
pre-recorded - When I started doing regular series, I'd write posts in advance and post them when I was going to be traveling. Those posts were tagged as pre-recorded. Nowadays, I realize that's terribly security practice, and more to the point virtually all of my posts are written in advance, so this is a useless tag that will likely disappear one day.
quotes - Used if I drop a quote into a post, be it brief or extensive.
lyrics - Basically the same as quotes, but for song lyrics. I should probably just combine this into quotes, honestly.
linkage - This tag means I wrote a post that specifically links out to some interesting thing on the internet.
meme - You'd never know to look at it nowadays, but back in the day LiveJournal had memes going around just like any other social media. I used this tag when I indulged, which wasn't often.
potpourri - A long time ago my posts rambled all over the place on assorted topics. Some of those posts got tagged with potpourri, and if I ever do go back and tag the old stuff I suspect this tag will be used a lot.
by request - Sometimes someone asks me for a specific post, usually a recipe. It's apparently good for my ego to tag those.
contest - I also did a few contests back in the day, mostly about guessing how much email would be in my work account after a trip. Definitely another bad security practice.
help me - I've got questions and/or needs that I would throw out to my friends. This is used a lot less now that so few people are on LiveJournal.
buy my stuff - A very specific kind of help me, but yeah, I used to have so many local friends on here that I would post stuff I was selling.
original work - Reserved for when I write something that might technically be publishable. Typically, this is poetry of dubious quality.
this weekend - way back in the day I'd occasionally post stuff I was doing the next weekend so people could consider joining me. This sometimes even happened.
tags - Created just for this post, as I'm sure I'll need to define tags in the future beyond this series.
Tags Describing Gigantic Yearly Series - 11 Tags
For many years I've tried to do an ongoing series. These would typically but not always have a post every Sunday. These have usually started in January and gone until completion, or collapse.
13yl - In 2010 I made a tentative pass at reviewing every movie I'd seen since my lists started back in 1998. It collapsed pretty quickly.
states - My 2011 series covered every state I'd been to, and was also used on some older "meme" style state lists, with periodic updates since then as I've visited new states.
songbook - Inspired my the success of the 2011 series and by a coworker asking for it, I did a songbook of my entire life in 2012, Nick Hornby style.
fun in the movie theater 2013 - Buoyed by two years of successes, in 2013, I tried to summarize every movie I saw that year, an effort that collapsed under the weight of how many movies I'd seen. By my 12th and final post I was already 16 movies behind!
galapagos 2013 - In December 2013 I went to the Galapagos Islands with my family. In 2014, I turned that into a comparatively short trip diary.
baseball stadium tour - After getting off to a good start back in the early 00s, I started putting serious effort into visiting every baseball stadium in 2012. By 2015 I was far enough along to justify a series just about this, with later addendums as warranted.
european sabbatical 2015 - I went on a month-long trip to Europe in August & September 2015. In 2016, I wrote about it at length.
As far as I can tell, there was no series in 2017.
last weekend 2018 - In 2018 I tried to write about my weekend every single week. This was an interesting experiment in short term memory.
author - In 2019 I wrote about some of my favorite authors at length.
in my mothers kitchen - In 2020 I used the vehicle of my mother's cooking to look at my childhood from another angle.
PKT25 - Ongoing as of this writing, I'm writing a not-so-brief history of my time as an active brother of the Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta fraternity.
Year in Review - 7 tags
My longest-standing feature is yearly summaries of many of the forms of media that I have consumed over course of a year. Naturally, they have tags all their own.
year in review - Tagged on literally every year in review post I've ever done. I'm not sure why, as the subcategories are far more useful. I can probably kill this one.
year in review - cinema - Every big yearly movie summary I've done. This started in 2003, but I've filled in some gaps here and there in the past, or elaborated on incomplete summaries from prior years.
year in review - concert - I started doing concert summaries in 2003, but unlike cinema, mostly got them right the first time.
year in review - books - The books came along in 2007.
year in review - television - Yearly round ups of television only came around last year. Before that I didn't watch tv. I blame the pandemic, my daughter and my wife, in that order.
mid year review - Since 2009, I've done a "the year so far" in terms of numbers of books/movies/concerts/LJ posts etc, which is pretty consistently on June 30.
baseball game stats - In 2011 I summarized every MLB game I had been to up to that point. I've updated it most years since as a sort of "baseball season in review."
36 tags down, 130 to go!