contentious.com

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the free online services I love and use daily is Del.icio.us, a popular social bookmarking tool.

I think founder Joshua Schachter has done an amazing job developing and managing this service, despite remarkably meager resources. (At least until recently: Yahoo bought Del.icio.us on Dec. 9, 2005.)

I do have one suggestion that I think would make Del.icio.us even more useful, however.

Joshua, could you please expand the “Notes” field for Del.icio.us entries? Right now it cuts off notes at 255 characters (about 50 words), which I think does a disservice to the potential of Del.icio.us.

Here’s why I’d like to see that field bumped up to, say, 500 or 750 characters (up to 150 words)…

I use Del.icio.us mainly for sharing my list of recommending reading links – that’s right, the same stuff you’ll see in the right-hand sidebar of this weblog. I store that content in Del.icio.us and then use another free tool (RSS to Javascript) to syndicate it back to Contentious.

Given this purpose, I use the Notes field in Del.icio.us consistently. I figure, what good is a link if you don’t tell people why you saved it, or why it’s worth visiting? Therefore, every time I save a link in Del.icio.us I put some text in the notes field that indicates the value of that link. Sometimes it’s text that I write, but more often it’s an excerpt I copy and paste from the target page.

If you’ve checked out my list of recommended links here on Contentious, or my Del.icio.us page, you’ll see that 255 characters is actually precious little content. I estimate that the content of about one-third to one-half of my entries get chopped off by this arbitrary limit, resulting in entries that are less rich than I intended.

Here’s a recent example:

Yesterday I read a blog posting by Allan Jenkins called “Painless Tagging: Great Tool.” He was explaining a new tool he’s begun using for tagging his blog posts. I need to do more with tagging my blog posts, and I’m behind on that because it’s rather a hassle. Allan described a way to eliminate some of that hassle. He wrote:

“One reason I used to rarely tag Desirable Roasted Coffee posts is that it was just too tedious to fiddle with html, remember the right Technorati or del.icio.us tag sytnax, etc. But now I’m using EGM Stratagy Tag Generator. Wow, punch in the tags, hit the button, and out pops the right html for clipping and pasting.”

I thought that was pretty cool, and worth checking out. So I posted it to Del.icio.us so I wouldn’t lose track of it. But when I did that, here’s what showed up in the Notes field:

“One reason I used to rarely tag Desirable Roasted Coffee posts is that it was just too tedious to fiddle with html, remember the right Technorati or del.icio.us tag sytnax, etc. But now I’m using EGM Stratagy Tag Generator. Wow, punch in the tags, hit th

Arrrrrgh! That’s frustrating. The whole reason why I was attracted to Allan’s description of the tool was because it clarified how to get around a hassle that’s been plaguing me. But, thanks to the arbitrary truncation limit at Del.icio.us, that point was lost – or at least obscured.

Even worse, I don’t always notice the truncation. I really only see if it I remember to check my Del.icio.us page (or my Contentious sidebar) to see what made it through. When I’m busy elsewhere on the web, I usually don’t bother.

Yes, I could consistently check each entry I post and go back to re-edit truncated entry for length – but honestly the reason why I started using Del.icio.us was to save time in providing links to share. When I save a link there, I do it quickly. Frankly, I’m unwilling to devote any more time per entry or add any steps to the process.

Plus, a further frustration: Del.icio.us lets me enter as much text as I like into the Notes field, but truncates only after I save the entry. This means any text over the 255-character limit simply vanishes. Were I to return to an entry to re-edit for length, I’d have to remember or retrieve what was lost. Again, that’s a hassle. In the world of online tools and services, hassles are always bad for business.

I can understand why Del.icio.us wants to limit the length of notes: storage is cheap, but it’s not infinite, and there are copyright concerns. This is why I use Furl and Del.icio.us together to save a complete copy of all my recommended links (plus other stuff I need).

Still, when you search Del.icio.us, that search looks at the complete content of each entry, including the notes – not just the title or the tags. When amassing a body of searchable content, richer is better. Therefore, placing such a tight constraint on the Notes field limits the potential richness of the Del.icio.us database. I believe this unrealistically tight limit may discourage avid Del.icio.us users from using the Notes field at all – which in turn inhibits the potential of this service.

I realize that most Del.icio.us users never bother with the notes field, they just save links with no clarification. I also notice that when I search Del.icio.us, I tend to ignore results that lack notes. They’re generally too cryptic – which means too likely to waste my time, and even possibly a spam attempt. Personally I’ll click through a few pages of Del.icio.us search results until I start seeing notes.

So I’m not asking Del.icio.us to have no limit at all on the notes field. However, I am hoping that with Yahoo in the picture, sufficient storage and processing resources might become available to allow Del.icio.us to expand its Notes field to a more reasonable length. If I could copy an excerpt of, say, up to 100 words (approx. 500 characters) as a note to a Del.icio.us entry, I’d be a happier camper. 150 words would be better still, but I’m not greedy about it.

Anyway, Joshua and Yahoo, I hope you consider this suggestion. Think about what it would mean to your search results.

Thanks.