In the software world, there are two primary systems for organizing information: folders and tags (also called labels). The difference is most noticeable as people transition from Outlook to Gmail, but I want to talk about the more general uses of tags and folders. Specifically, I’m going to go over when tags aren’t the right way to organize things.
First, let’s make sure everyone understands the difference between the two. While there are a lot of superficial differences, the thing that really separates the two is that a file can only exist in one folder, but a file can be associated with multiple tags. For example, let’s say you just bought an airplane ticket for your mom and you want to file away your confirmation email. You often classify your emails as “family” or “travel”. In this case, the email applies to both categories, but with folders you have to pick one. With tags, you can assign the email to both categories.
People often think there are other differences, such as a hierarchical structure (i.e. subfolders), but both folders and tags can support that (it’s just less common with tags).
In the example I gave above (organizing emails) the tag system is obviously much better than the folder system because it doesn’t make you choose between the two different categories. The problem is that people seem to think that tags are always better, but that’s just not the case. They are generally better, but sometimes organization requires mutual exclusivity between different categories.
I’ll use the Less Annoying Software CRM as an example of when tags just aren’t as useful. When you’re dealing with sales leads, you generally want each lead to belong to exactly one status. If someone fills out a contact form on your website, you would categorize them as a “lead”. If you call them up and decide that they aren’t ready to buy, you would categorize them as “inactive”. “Inactive” and “Lead” are mutually exclusive. It’s one or the other, never both. For this reason, we use a folder system (we call them “statuses”, but they’re basically the same thing as folders).
If you’re a hardcore tag supporter, you might wonder why it matters that the two statuses can’t both exist at the same time. The best reason I can come up with is because it messes up reporting. If I want to see a report of the current status (or folder) of all my leads, I can’t have overlap between inactive and active leads.
This is obviously a somewhat obscure example, but there are all kinds of different scenarios where folders actually do make sense. When I finish writing this blog post in Google Docs, I’m going to want to move it from the “draft” folder to the “published” folder. This means adding it to one and then removing it from the other, because Google uses tags for just about everything (they call them folders in Google Docs, but they’re really tags).
So enough rambling. What’s the point? The point is that in many cases folders are outdated and ineffective, but don’t disregard them entirely. They still serve a purpose, and if you find yourself designing software, I suggest you put some thought in before going with tags just because that’s what’s cool right now.
