Thanks to a passionate reader
July 11, 2008 //
A reader tonight, highlighted a feature on this blog that upsets them enough to post the comment below. I’m not sure if they wanted to have a dig, or provide useful feedback because they care. It’s unfortunate that they decided to hide behind anonymity by not linking to their Web site/blog. If it wasn’t for trolls we’d naturally assume it was friendly feedback. I won’t assume either way. Anyway, here’s what ‘Edison’ had to say;
Why do you insist on linking keywords in your articles to your blog’s archive of that tag? To be frank, it’s retarded and makes you look extremely self-centered and obnoxious.
If I see the word Apple hyperlinked in an articlea bout technology, I assume it will go to Apple’s online presence.
If you are tagging your article on your blog, why aren’t you listing the tags at the bottom of each article? Your tagging serves no purpose in this case.
On a side note, your “Twitter updates” box in the sidebar has not been working for weeks, if not months.
I thought it was worth publishing a new post to explain the method behind the madness. I’ve pasted the response I left ‘Ed’ (may I call you Ed?) in the comments:
@Edison - thanks for the feedback. You’re not the first person to have asked that question. Mind you, the first person wasn’t so passionate. I thought it was obvious that the hyperlinks I create are in bold.
The tags to which you refer, are automatically created by the blog software. They lead back to previous posts which have been tagged with those terms. Given that the tag cloud was installed afterwards, I don’t suppose I need them anymore. I personally don’t like tags at the top or bottom of posts as they tend to look messy.
Also, thanks for the feedback regarding the Twitter plugin. The Twitter API instructions have a serious security breach which meant my login details had to be disabled when we found every blog reader ended up automatically signed into my twitter account. I didn’t realise it had stopped working altogether. Shame you didn’t report it when you first saw it. I’ll get my developer to fix it next week – or remove it altogether.
So, on Monday, I’m going to disable the feature that automatically tags words which have been tagged in previous posts. If you look closely you can tell which tags are automatically added. The text I hyperlink is in bold, whilst the tagged words aren’t.
Is there any value in having the Twitter updates on the sidebar? Do you ever take the time to read them? Should I remove or keep the updates from the people I follow on Twitter.
Cuan Mulligan says 
To be honest, I’m glad that you’re going to remove that tagging plugin, I found it quite confusing. I’ve been back over a few posts and I see what you mean about your links being in bold vs the normal type from the tagging plugin.
However, other bloggers sometimes use bold on links that they want to particularly highlight. You also have a tendency to write short posts with no added links apart from those tagged automatically.
The tagged links are actually quite hard to see on the blog (OK if in a feed reader) as they are practically the same colour as the normal paragraph text.
And finally, the same point I made before - it’s also confusing as the tagging software tags multiple instances of the same word in each post - see “iPhone” in this post for example: http://paulfwalsh.com/how-to-unlock-and-jailbreak-the-iphone/
Realistically, these are only minor moans of mine, had they been deal-breakers I would have voted with my feet and dropped the feed. They’re more like minor annoyances…
July 12th, 2008
Getting rid of the tag thing makes sense. If you want to point to previous posts about a particular subject a normal link would be more logical
As for the twitter thing - I don’t really pay any attention to it, as I read you over RSS mainly
Michele
July 12th, 2008
Paul,
It does genuinely please me to see that you take on board what pople in your comments say. Good work.
I wasn’t having a dig (well, maybe a little) and I’m glad you value the feedback. Regarding the Twitter issue in the sidebar, I took a while to realise it wasn’t just a temporary issue on Twitter’s side.
I find your comment about anonymity astounding. Why do you assume that someone who does not provide a website URL is attempting to be anonymous?
More importantly, are you that narrowminded that you think everyone who uses the internet has a website? Surely not. I know you move mostly in tech/blogosphere circles, so most of your friends and colleagues are likely to have websites or blogs, but come on, there’s a world of casual internet users out there. I did not provide a URL because, as hard as it may be for you to believe, I don’t have a website or a blog.
July 12th, 2008