We've talked a lot about making better use of our content classification and tagging system and now we've gone and done it.

The principle of a good classification system is all about telling items apart from one another as well as grouping items together that have some relationship or commonality. The best classification system we (read: human kind) has ever developed is the Scientific Classification of Organisms that helps us determine what family, genus, and species a living creature belongs in based on common and ancestral traits of the organism themselves. It get's really technical, like whether the hairs of the fur of a species are hollow or solid, but it's all there and does a fantastic job of helping us sort life out.

We've done the same thing with our website's blogs, videos, and everything else. All of our user generated content has been using a tagging system but we haven't been able to harness it well because users can tag things all willy nilly and in any order or sequence that they want - whether or not it makes sense. Instead, we're restricting the tagging decisions that our users can make, which sounds like a downside until you notice how it makes all of our sections more clear and meaningful. After some time working with this new system, we'll likely see interests grow around the subject-oriented areas of our site as people become attached to the environment section or the politics section of our site (to name a few).

For our users, they will notice that the way they have been tagging their articles has changed and they are now only allowed to choose only one parent section and one child section - much like choosing a genus and species - for their blogs and videos. They will also notice that when they edit older articles that they will be asked to re-tag their entries with the new system in order to complete the editing job.

This is just the start of a bunch of improvements to our site, we'll keep you tuned in as more work rolls out.