Folksonomy session

From SocialSoftwareSymposium

Jump to: navigation, search

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
  • 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
  • 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