For me it all began last year with ydn-delicious {at} yahoogroups(.)com/msg03572.html">a message on the Yahoo! Developer Network del.icio.us mailing list. In the message, thefangmonster[0] was introducing a a bookmarklet to make easier the saving of a particular tag when adding bookmarks on del.icious.

This particular tag is the “via:” one which is “intended to be a corollary to the for: tag, albeit an unofficial one”. It is in fact a totally unofficial tag[1], which nonetheless may help immensely in giving credit (whereand if credit is due) and keeping track of who your links are coming from.

How does it work?

• Anytime you save a bookmark, whether by posting or saving from another user, add one more tag, a “via:source” where “source” is the name or nick on delicious or the name of the website or author if he has no account
• When you want to see all the links you got from a particular source you can use it as a tag.
  http://del.icio.us/nicoladagostino/via:rentzsch is an example of all the urls I got from well-known developer Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch[2]
• In some instances, if adopted by the users, it can even show additional info about the history of the link, as you can see I got it from my friend Nicola “koolinus” Losito and when later aqualung grabbed from me he added me as a source but also kept the original via: tag [3].

As you can see it’s a small addition that can be very useful if you’re a writer (like me) or researcher, if you are interested in the inherent “social” features of bookmarking or simply if you like to think credits (and thanks) should have their a place on del.icio.us

Notes:
[0] who I’d like to thank for the epiphany
[1] although ydn-delicious {at} yahoogroups(.)com/msg00799.html">mentioned in summer 2005 in an offhand remark by del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter.
[2] who also has a del.icio.us account.
[3] which after all should be expected since it looks like he got the original idea to use via: tags at the beginning of 2005