Tagging - what and why
The question of how useful tagging really is came up during a class as part of my communication design studies. Since tagging is a very hot topic today I asked a community about tagging that is as hot as tagging: the video bloggers. I know the people who program ANT are on that list and are thinking about the tagging problem at the moment. Here are some answers to my sometimes naive questions:
While thinking about the problem of tagging it seems apparent that the diversity of tags that are user or creator defined could cause chaos and anarchy. The simplest idea is to make it hirarchical so the question that triggered it all.
Can tagging be put into a hierarchical system?
Andreas from http://www.solitude.dk wrote:
If you want a hierarchical system I think you're
probably better off using something else (since tags are flat by
definition).
Michael from interdigitate.com wrote:
so as an example, this group would create genres or whatever.... and
you make a video about rage... and its funny. so tag could be
rage_comedy, comedy being a predefined genre established by the
community. you could search for rage. you could search for comedy.
you could search for rage_comedy.
you keep the tagging as an open system, like technorati.... and
utilize it in a more localized manner with a structured reference
naming convention/taxonomy.
Is it a better idea to make an organized hirarchicial system out of the anarchic tagging?
Andreas from http://www.solitude.dk wrote:
To take a classic example: "Horse" would be classified as something like
"Animal -> Mammal -> Horse" by a zoologist (probably with more steps), but
to a economist that classification doesn't make sense. He would probably
prefer "Goods -> Animals -> Horse", and I personally might classify horse
under "Quiet Sunday Afternoons". It all depends who you are, where you
come from, what you're trying to do, what role you're playing right then
and so on.
Adrian Miles from hypertext.RMIT wrote:
it isn't anarchy. It *is* an ecology, literally and I mean that
literally. for the ecology to be viable it needs diversity. The web
is a social system first, all content on the web that gets tagged is
100% social. I tag my institutions pages describing rules because I
need to find them for students, that tag (lets called it
RMITRulesandRegulations) is sensible to me, and possibly no others.
As Andreas said, centralised taxonomies won't work, and can't, unless
we get reductionist. Once we do that, the intelligence of tagging is
destroyed. It is the opposite of existing 'tagging' because it is
idiosyncratic, bottom up etc. An example i used with students the
other day.
A book enters the library. About videoblogging. This book cannot be
catalogued under that topic heading because it doesn't exist. Under
Dewey classification it might end up in the 600s, as a technology or
800 under literature and rhetoric, or 400 under language, or 000
under generalities. Perhaps 700 since it seems to be more about the
arts. and this will probably depend on the individual librarian.
You're a student wanting this book. What topic heading would you look
after? If you wanted to learn how to do it, perhaps you'd think of it
as an art, or a technology. If you're looking for an overview,
perhaps you'd think it should hang out with the new media theory
crowd. If you're a comp sci student you'd probably think the book
ought to be near to the other technical manuals. With tagging this
decision is taken from the cataloguer to the end user. the context of
relevance as it applies to them is how it is catalogued. that's a
tag. So each user tags the same object in different ways.
This is better than excellent. It allows serendipity, sharing,
interdiscplinarity, tag browsing, and for entirely new things to form
(i follow a tag on del.icio.us and discover intriguing things that
i'd never have tagged that way). Yes, tags will become irrelevant,
die, etc. Remember, cataloguing / taxonomies largely developed at a
time when things were thought to be stable, the web is pretty much
the most unstable thing out there, so the most successful tools are
those that are as adaptable as this place.
If its an ecological system if it then survival of the fittest?
Josh Kinberg wrote:
Its not survival of the fittest, unless you're trying to create a
"popular" tag. The idea is to make things findable. So, rather than
force users to conform to a system and learn that system's vocabulary,
instead we let users create the system and design their own
vocabulary. You've got to listen to Clay Shirky on this.... totally
worth it!
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail470.html"
a general user perspective on tagging from Raymond M. Kristiansen
(dltq.blogs.com/vlog) wrote:
As Adrian and others have noted, tags as they work today make an
ecological system, and it is interesting to see how it works out. I
recommend Jon Udell's screencast on del.icio.us in case you have not
seen it: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/03/14.html#a1193"
I might have mentioned this on this list before, but another
interesting use of tags is Ross Mayfield's "indicatr". It is not
"indicator", but indicatr - a social code between those few in the
know, and who want to join in on that game. There are similar memes
out there, as Michael Meiser once blogged about on his blog (forgot
the url for that, sorry Michael)
(hah, there I triggered Michael Meiser's alert signal, I typed his
name so he will read this post because his scripts alert him. mwahaha,
thought control!!)
To me, tagging is very useful, and yet I understand some of fALK's
scepticism. However, I do not agree with this part:
my comment on the count of the taggs:
because once there are like 1 Mio. Taggers out there
there will be about every word in the dictonary be a tag - I think.
And that would make tagging useless because searching for a certain
thing would be nothing more then a text search.
Useless?! Far from it. I would LOVE to tag-browse one million tags.
Jumping, and documenting my tags-surfing. It's like a mindmap... I
will Show what I mean in a screencast of my own one day.
Today, one of my favorite hobbies is to surf the delicious-feeds of
some of my favourite bloggers/thinkers publishing online. Jon Udell
(http://del.icio.us/judell), Ross Mayfield
(http://del.icio.us/linkorama), and Howard Rheingold
(http://del.icio.us/hrheingold) are good examples of people whose bookmark collection I like to surf.
Part of the whole point is that tagging is very forgiving. There is no
little helper popping up asking you "do you Really mean indicatr? May
I suggest indicator instead?" (Like that guy in MS Word. I HATE THAT
GUY!). I can add a bookmark in my del.icio.us feed (which by the way
is at http://del.icio.us/dltq) with no tags at all, or I can enter 3,
5 or 20 tags. Tag-spamming Can be a problem, but it will be a
minority.
To me, tagging is as important as RSS, which basically means that
tagging and folksonomies will change EVERYTHING. At least how we deal
with information online.
....
So if tagging works for you you have to try it out. It certainly is a new way to experience the web through tags - an experience that can be rewarding or leave you lost in space. I personally start to like it more and more but still need time to see the full potential. The above comments gave me some more insight that I really needed to get into tagging at all.