Folksonomy session
From SocialSoftwareSymposium
Notes by Terrell Russell, edited by Jackson Fox (Jackson's notes)
David Weinberger
David Weinberger blogged his talk before he gave it.
- just one tool?
- meaning comes from unintended actions of individuals
- laptop6000/notebook2000/portable146 on ebay
- symbolism
- stick it to the man
- metadata is worldview, clay shirky (also politics, bias)
- with folksonomy, more voices
- meaning emerges* comes from us
- complex creation through simple actions of many
- non-rational as a whole
- we won't just manage, we'll build cathedrals together
- hopeful, through termite-tagging
- we're used to a system that trims the fat from publishing
- the fat is good, the more the better
- morville, ambient findability, skeptical at firs - now a believer
- stick it to the man
- but there's a danger
- has to be diverse - but not so diverse that there's one of everything (never happen
- essentialism (our western culture)
- there is one true meaning to things - it's easier to understand
- you use a doll to prop open a door
- it doesn't affect what the doll *really* is
- the metaphysics of keeping it all straight is quite impossible
- too many things going on and too keep track of
- coloring within the lines
- unenforcable
- alienates meaning - puts it in the thing itself - not acceptable anymore
- folksonomy questions this* returns power to us... but there's a danger
- the meaning is in our own selves
- we've might take away too much
- but there's a poetry in essentialism - we lose in the many voices...
- it's new and profound - a new shared world of meaning
- some guy named it
- there's new dimensions here - opens up many opportunities
- what else can we do? we seem to have changed the rules
- and now it will be a blog post... get link...
Thomas Vander Wal
Thomas Vander Wal's presentation "Understanding Tagging" is available in PDF (1MB) at http://S3.amazonaws.com/2006presentations/UNCSSS/Understanding_Tagging.pdf
- Design is in the Details
- data/metadata externally applied to an object
- used for sorting
- hook for aggregating
- identifier/
- i've been here
rashmi sinha - describing tagging
- taps into the cognitive process without adding much cognitive cost
the F word* folksonomy
- defined
- result of personal free tagging - for one's own retrieval
- usually done in a social environment - shared and open to others
- done by the person consuming the information
value derived in people using their own vocabulary, adding explicit meaning, come from inferred undersanding of the object/info.
people are not categorizing - they're connecting
it's not about finding - it's about refinding...
- people can't refind stuff. it's theirs* they can describe it
- they get tense - but they recover it
- we have a great opportunity to relieve them of their red faces
folksonomy triad - three corners
- as identity moves to community - becomes a dual folksonomy triad
- identity -> culture (with object
- vocabulary -> terminolgy (with metadata)
folksonomy vs taxonomy
- terms in each
- business and taxonomy
- customers and folksonomy - a different understanding
- revolves around a product
they start working together - becomes a venn diagram
- product sits in the middle - where there is overlap
- the term of use is where both 'see it' - where they agree
the business values of tagging
- where are the tensions
- naming control vs. people's vocab
- sample groups vs. everybody (potentially)
- in-house vs. outside service
- $$$ w/ value vs. $ w/ unknown value
- consistency vs. emergence
business gains
- improved understanding of customers
- current terminology - all of it
- amazon - allows pivots on almost any asset/tag - very rich
- kevin federline - what is the term for someone without any talent
- amazon - allows pivots on almost any asset/tag - very rich
- market segmentations - what are the groups - can easily see them
- ability to follow the customer's view
who is tagging
- 0.5% of people on the web are tagging - and growing
- 3-5million people tagging
- 30-40% of pictures on flickr
why do they tag?
- their own use/value first (del.icio.us lesson)
- adding their perspective/context
- missing metadata - baby socks good for ipods
- emergent vocabulary
- personal descriptors
- refindability
- aggregation in total
- task-based aggregation
- statement of interest
- sociality
main ones are *personal value* and *refindability*
spheres of sociality
- mass
- collective
- selective
- personal
every tag is sacred
- every person is an expert in their own vocabulary (tag)
shape of tags
- nouns, descriptions, adjectives, expletives
where do people tag?
- social bookmarking
- media
- shopping
- geo-location
- dating
- intranet
- mobile
- OS
tag venues - wherever there is a digital marker
using tag services
- tagging
- descriptions
- feeds
- interface
- additional offerings
- favorites
interaction
- tags
- delimited combinations
- suggested tags
- from own or others
- tag combinations
- ratings
- feeds
filtering and clustering
tag combinations
- rawsugar
- algorithmically understand facets - automatic
- add a comma when you use a space...
improvements - where do we go from here...
- get value of tagging for non-taggers in the open
- understanding the value of refindability without them doing it
- self-building and self-healing thesaurus
- volatility of the tagged object
- when it's updated - notifications?
- corrected/edited
- removed
- archived
marchionini
- can we broaden this to other media* not text?
marshall
- why is tagging any different than narrative text without verbs?
- is there a difference between the efficacy of tagging with simple words
- and just using full text from descriptions
- vander wal - tough to get inferred meaning from the users without them going through the cognitive process of categorizing/naming...
lampe - all articles are tagged as 'gay' at slashdot
- have to be cognizant of the politics of the tags and who is in charge
- vander wal - identity is important- allows to identify who is doing that
lampe - evaluative or descriptive - context of the object
weinberger - concept of interestingness help to get past this?
chirag shah - nontext nonnoun tagging (gary/cathy)
- are the tags driven by how people search?
- terrell - limited today by our text box* it will change how we use it
- vander wal - also emergent - as people work this out - it will shift/change
- self healing thesaurus
fred - how can i sense-make my future state? how do i learn to tag for my future self?
- barreau - tagging doesn't allow us to categorize well... we do this when we make sense of things - we box them
- jacob - it's more a function of filtering* getting close is what's important
- vanderwal - it's still a bit of data
- marshall - people don't remember things they have
spurgin - i use it to simply remember what i've found before
- 'recipe' when needing something to cook she likes
jacob - there are different goals
- want to read later
- want to keep around
- was important at the time
weinberger
- 'i want to have my name seen - i want to participate'
vander wal - the interface matters - it's still very nascent
marchionini - the act of tagging is not just about memory - it's the act of tagging itself that makes it part of learning
- *forme* reflecting on other's knowledge forces it to be more visible as well as reinforce that time taken thinking about it makes it more salient that others have knowledge that I do not. this is critical for group cohesion.
vander wal - accountants have to know all the vocabulary for everything
- talk to them to learn the vocab of an organization
- whomever they talk to most recently is the words they use right now
- we have different hats as we learn to talk to others
jackson fox - lulu - creator tags only - is that not folksonomy?
- spammable? our creators aren't spamming (yet?)
- vander wal - it's seeding - but not folksonomy
wildemuth - continuum of control
- professional classifier - with controlled vocabulary
all the way down to
- everyone tagging with whatever words they want
