January 08, 2009

Can Authors Help Enrich Content By Tagging It?

I came late in the conversation to a blog post by Mike Shatzkin, but frankly, it still continues today. Please go read his post then come back. Its easy to blame the authors for not tagging their own content, but in reality the form factor and usability of the authoring tools isn't really where it needs to be.

The industry still relies heavily on MS Word for authoring, and at best people will tag in-line content with character style sheets. Getting a template file out to writers with an agreed-upon vocabulary for style sheets seems like an easy thing to do, but in practice, try getting people to install or use a .DOT file, particularly if they're not working on a machine that you've set up for them.

True, there are authoring tools that offer better tagging functionality than Word, and there are also 3rd party modules in the MS Office space that can ameliorate the issue. However, if the industry is really going to get to XML-First and have authors tag content at inception, the tools are going to have to come a long way. For now, 'post-tagging' will remain the norm -- by editors, by marketing, by technologists or service bureau resources that prep files for multi-channel delivery.

As far as getting authors to do the tagging, I don't quite agree that they'll resist, but see how some non-digital types might. An incentive remains -- if the author can prep the file according to some best practices, the incentive is that their content will have a longer tail on Web, in Print, on tablet devices, and beyond. That in itself should help motivate us all in this economy.

In the end, the author should and must help -- AND every participant in the workflow for content preparation should enrich the content accordingly.

Posted at 03:54 pm by Joseph Bachana

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