Creating personal taxonomies

by Charles Broskoski

We like to say “there’s no wrong way to use Are.na.” We intentionally keep the tools for organizing pretty lightweight. There are no tags, no folders, no real hierarchies — just channels, blocks, and connections. The idea is that channels are more about defining a context rather than strict and specific organization.

With that said, there are times when one might want to group similar channels together. There are two ways to do this: one is indexing channels by titling similar channels with the same symbol, and the other is by making a group.

Both of these methods emerged from usage patterns on Are.na. We love seeing Are.na used in unintended ways.

Making a channel index key

The channel index is a view on your profile where you can see all your channels, grouped alphabetically.

A view of the Are.na profile of Pierre Marteau, the channels are grouped alphabetically by first letter.

To group similar channels together in this view, people have used the method of updating the titles of channels to start with a particular symbol, emoji, number, or letter.

This pattern emerged from people on Are.na, and as far as we know, the first instance of someone using this method of organization came from the account Ultimape.

A view of the Are.na profile of rosemary, the channels are all grouped with emoji, this view shows a group of channels that use a flower emoji and a group of channels grouped with the ladybug emoji

Coming up with a “key” only requires you to think a little bit about the “types” of channels you have. Your method for grouping can be as straightforward or as unique as you like.

For example, you could decide that all channels beginning with a “+” are all about people and channels starting with a “–” are all main subjects of interest. The next time you want to see all of your channels about people you can just go to your index and find all channels starting with a “+”.

A view of the Are.na profile of jo suk, the channels are all grouped with symbols, this view shows a group of channels that use the ✕ symbol, the ☴ symbol and the ⁂ symbol.

For examples, we recommend looking first at some of the Index key’s collected by the group Teal: https://www.are.na/teal/welcome-to-the-index.

Once you have an idea of the type of organization you’d like to start implementing, go to your index page by visiting your profile and clicking “Index” under the “View” section.

Once there, update your channel titles by clicking on the ⚙️ icon and editing your channel like normal.

Using Groups

Another way of grouping similar channels together is by using groups.

Groups are typically used by multiple people collaborating on more than one channel together (like classes, companies, or studios), but you can also use them as a way to link your own channels together by making groups with only you as a member.

In the image below, the Dance Club group puts together various channels about dance music and club architecture.

An index view of the group "Dance Clubs"

To use this method, create a group for the category of channels you'd like to create together. Then, edit your channels and change the author of the channel to your new group.