Tagging Feelings ...

October 11, 2005 1:38 PM

FolksonomyFilter: I'm looking for well-executed uses of tagging beyond the beaten path (flickr, del.icio.us, etc). I have several questions about user behavior when it comes to tagging schemes, and would love some pointers to places to go.

One big question: Are there any examples of tagging where the fundamental incentive for doing it is to improve a shared pool of information (as opposed to a personal pool)? Technorati is the most extreme example of the personal pool: only you tag your blog posts. Flickr and del.icio.us have a collective element, but it's still about cataloguing your photos and your links. 43things is the best example I can think of showing the shared info pool (it's still your goals, but almost the entire point is that you're sharing them).

Second big question: Is there a tagging scheme that accounts for changes in the pool of information? Let's say, for example, you create a site where people can tag all the coffee shops in town. The "freewifi" tag grows particularly popular. But one of the coffee shops tagged with "freewifi" stops offering the service. Is there any way for a tagging scheme to allow users to account for that?

Third big question: What are some resources for learning more about tagging and how to do it right?

posted by grrarrgh00 to technology (18 comments total)

For your first big question, a project I am working on professional has plans to do just that. Sorry I don't have anything to share with you otherwise. There's a lot yet that tagging CAN do that isn't being done effectively.
posted by Kickstart70 at 1:39 PM on October 11, 2005

s/professional/professionally/
posted by Kickstart70 at 1:40 PM on October 11, 2005

As a rider question on to this, what's the difference between tagging and keywords? Lots of systems already use keywords far beyond the scope of pictures, websites, and blogs.
posted by onalark at 1:46 PM on October 11, 2005

What are some resources for learning more about tagging and how to do it right?
Talk to librarians. They've done this before, although they didn't call it something silly like folksonomy. When it comes to the classification of information, nobody beats librarians.
posted by boo_radley at 1:49 PM on October 11, 2005

You might enjoy reading Clay Shirky's Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags.
posted by ericb at 1:55 PM on October 11, 2005

"Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags"
posted by ericb at 1:56 PM on October 11, 2005

I like consumating.com. Anyone can tag anybody on this dating site. Also, you kind of missed the point of Flickr -- lots of value comes from your friends tagging your photos, not just your own things.
posted by mathowie at 1:58 PM on October 11, 2005

I was about to link to "Ontology is Overrated" too, here's another essay in a similar vein...

HierarchyVersusFacetsVersusTags
posted by bobo123 at 1:59 PM on October 11, 2005

By amazing coincidence, I've been working on this very issue lately. Right now, you can tag your own posts to your hearts content, and add tags to other people's posts. "Trusted Users" (aka people who can rate comments 0) can edit all the tags on a post, which will hopefully cut down on tag abuse.

Is that what you meant?
posted by Captain_Tenille at 2:27 PM on October 11, 2005

Very good essay, and although I subscribe to Mr. Shirky's blog, I hadn't read it, thanks.

Captain_Tenille, that's related to my meaning, but doesn't encompass it entirely. Posts are relatively static things, which works well with the tagging. Someone might update or correct or slightly change a post, but it will probably hew to its tags into the indefinite future. But something with more possible variability, like the freewifi example, stands to suffer from "tag rot," where the tags no longer apply. I'm wondering how to deal with that.

I'm mulling a "flag this tag" option, where anyone could question a tag they think is incorrect, and when the tagger signs in, she'll see an alert, be able to consider their reasoning, and act accordingly (possibly deleting the tag, in the freewifi example). But I can't think of any other situations where something like this is has been necessary.
posted by grrarrgh00 at 2:41 PM on October 11, 2005

Oh and as for "doing it right", you should consider allowing spaces within tags. The whole NotUsingSpaces thing seems like a legacy of old unix systems. For example, Yahoo's del.icio.us clone uses comma seperated tags.
posted by bobo123 at 3:20 PM on October 11, 2005

I run a code snippets site which is basically.. "del.icio.us for code". Very popular, and gets almost a thousand referrals off of Google each day as it's very search engine friendly (and legitimately so, unlike many sites!). I've found that tagging systems are usually very SEO friendly, so that's one good point for them.

Let's say, for example, you create a site where people can tag all the coffee shops in town. The "freewifi" tag grows particularly popular. But one of the coffee shops tagged with "freewifi" stops offering the service. Is there any way for a tagging scheme to allow users to account for that?

Now that's a great question, and one which I don't feel is necessarily covered well yet.. but, in theory, it's possible if you merged an amalgam of "most consistent tags" and "most popular recent tags", I'd guess.
posted by wackybrit at 3:38 PM on October 11, 2005

I happen to bookmark things in delicious every once in a while simply for the community's good rather than for my own collection of bookmarks. When I do this it usually is in the form of "tag for me" and "oh yeah, and a tag for those people who don't get my tag system..." This might have started for me, because when I first discovered delicious way back when I was totally confused about it and didn't see it as a way to keep my own bookmarks but rather saw it as a way to find things instead of using Google. I'm sure there are others out there that also try to help the community via delicious tags.
posted by pwb503 at 6:53 PM on October 11, 2005

It's not entirely what you're asking for, but when you add a link to del.icio.us that is already in the system, it will suggest tags for you, to try and get you to give this link the same tags as other people did. Because you're also adding your own tags (I label a lot of things "biology" and "science" that other people may only have tagged as "science") you can find your way from link to link within remotely related tags.
Through this, you can theoretically alter the way a link is found. By copying a popular link tagged as "cows" by many users, and labeling it "bovine", people searching for the tag "bovine" will now find the link that was previously only found through "cows".
posted by easternblot at 8:25 PM on October 11, 2005

So are you saying we could go through all the links we can find, labelling the ones showing breasts as "Boobies," and so Fark the place?
posted by five fresh fish at 11:08 PM on October 11, 2005

Are there any examples of tagging where the fundamental incentive for doing it is to improve a shared pool of information?

Last.fm allows music tagging, which includes music you listen to as well as the music that their radio widget can play.

There are plenty of useful tags, although some people pollute it with pointless ones such as "my favorite songs right now".

This dichotomy of approaches was memorably discussed by PlasticBag, which divided them between "filing" and "annotating".

Is there a tagging scheme that accounts for changes in the pool of information?

This is a big issue with tagging. There are few systems that permit, for example, challenges of mistagging. Theoretically tagging systems could become polluted the way that trackbacks or blog comments or Amazon reviews have been. Imagine Amazon with tags, and obscure authors all tagging their books "bestseller" ... At present the only method of handling this is popularity voting, but in some cases -- such as Last.fm music streams, or many types of search results -- all it takes is one vote to get something to show up, and the recipient of the result or product is none the wiser that it was only due to this one bogus vote.

On Last.fm I can imagine a feud between music genres resulting in mistagging wars. Just wait until you're listening to the electroclash tag and Barry Manilow shows up. As a veteran of USENET having experienced alt.syntax.tactical "newsgroup invasions" I can't discount this type of organized group behavior when presented with an open system.

What are some resources for learning more about tagging and how to do it right?

Try You're It!

Several good links here, too.
posted by dhartung at 1:05 AM on October 12, 2005

Thanks for the thoughtful answers, everyone. Thanks especially, Dan, I hadn't seen that PlasticBag discussion, which led me to this broad vs. narrow folksonomy distinction, which I haven't encountered before. A lot of good stuff to look through.

Any thoughts on the tag-flagging?
posted by grrarrgh00 at 10:05 AM on October 12, 2005

Difference between keywords and tagging... one key difference

keywords are created and owned by the author/document managers. Tags are created by the consuming audience, either in a limited fashion, like flickr where freinds and family can tag and object, or in a totally open way, the way delicious allows any URL to have any tag.

Some people are calling keywords tags becaus ethey dont' know anything about categorization, so they add a few keywords to their blog post and call it a tag.

The word tag, though, comes from graffiti, and as such it's nature is the uncontrolled free human expression it allows. To embrace tags is to give yourself over to the wisdom (or maddness) of crowds.
posted by christina at 11:48 AM on October 27, 2005