Technorati Tags. Damn they are chruning out so much cool stuff. Thanks to Tom for pushing me to get us hooked up with Technorati more closely. It's coming. And I'm very interested in these tags.
This is one example of the larger debate raging in the metadata world (what? you didn't know?) pitting folksonomies against controlled vocabularies. Back in the day I used to go on and on about 'controlled vocabularies', although I didn't call them that at the time (I'm thinking of all the semantic web future XML stuff I used to talk about.) But now I'm firmly in the folksonomies camp (although I'm not so sold on the name itself.)
The basic debate is about how to add descriptions to the information blurbs we are constantly posting to the web. Flickr and Del.icio.us got it right, I think, in that these metadata descriptions - or 'tags' - need to emerge from the bottom up. That is, you don't start with a controlled vocabulary of allowed tags, you just let people use any words they want for tags.
In short: the downside of this uncontrolled tagging is that some people will choose 'NYC' while other people will choose 'New York City' for what should be the same tag (the goal is to facilitate grouping similar posts by searching for similar tags.) The upside is that if you let people just choose whatever tag they think is best they seem to actually add the metadata!
Or, in other words, controlled vocabularies make sense in a theoretical way, but they don't actually work in practice because people always find the controlled vocabulary to be too rigid. Anyone have a counter example?
Here's a tempered sort of anti-folksonomies post from Louis Rosenfeld, and a rebuttal I largely agree with from Clay Shirky, who writes: Furthermore, users pollute controlled vocabularies, either because they misapply the words, or stretch them to uses the designers never imagined, or because the designers say “Oh, let’s throw in an ‘Other’ category, as a fail-safe” which then balloons so far out of control that most of what gets filed gets filed in the junk drawer. Usenet blew up in exactly this fashion, where the 7 top-level controlled categories were extended to include an 8th, the ‘alt.’ hierarchy, which exploded and came to dwarf the entire, sanctioned corpus of groups.
The Shirky link is the same as Rosenfeld--
Interesting--I remember your semantic web posts and was wondering where the concept went before all this surfaced. I haven't been following flickr but look at delicio.us links all the time. More amazing stuff than one could ever see.
Thanks. Link fixed.
Yeah, I've really changed my mind on this one. I guess that's not such a bad thing.
Similarly, I used to believe very much in deep file system hierarchies. That is: lots of folders, and folders in folders, to organize your stuff. Like your summer trip photos should be located on your hard drive in the directory /home/photos/2004/summer/trip/ or something like that. Now I lean the other way and think we should just throw everything (like all your photos) into a big pile and then use advanced search to find what we want on the fly.
So, for instance, if I was building the image system on this site over again today, I'd do it very differently. And (uncontrolled vocabulary) tags would be a big part of the system.
And BTW, the Shirky piece is typically good, and it might be historically interesting to note that this is the exact line that Jorn Barger at the now defunct Robot Wisdom used to argue all the time. Predefined data structures don't work - not because there is some theoretical problem, there isn't - but just because you don't end up using them. The problem is in the implementation, not in the theory.
I guess it takes the process of actually building stuff to realize some of these things.
I don't mind the hierarchies in our image system, it's especially helpful for linking to thumbnail pages. I am using the search function more and more, but 3 times out of 7 I can't remember what I named something. I like the streamlined upload page but the only downside to it is before, you had to pick a category before you could upload a pic, now I have to be really self-disciplined and remember to assign the pics to different folders after the upload.
That's a good point about categories. Being able to assign one when you upload is probably a good thing. I could make it so the option only appears if you have already made some albums.
That'd be good. I'm currently behind in my picture filing.
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This is one example of the larger debate raging in the metadata world (what? you didn't know?) pitting folksonomies against controlled vocabularies. Back in the day I used to go on and on about 'controlled vocabularies', although I didn't call them that at the time (I'm thinking of all the semantic web future XML stuff I used to talk about.) But now I'm firmly in the folksonomies camp (although I'm not so sold on the name itself.)
The basic debate is about how to add descriptions to the information blurbs we are constantly posting to the web. Flickr and Del.icio.us got it right, I think, in that these metadata descriptions - or 'tags' - need to emerge from the bottom up. That is, you don't start with a controlled vocabulary of allowed tags, you just let people use any words they want for tags.
In short: the downside of this uncontrolled tagging is that some people will choose 'NYC' while other people will choose 'New York City' for what should be the same tag (the goal is to facilitate grouping similar posts by searching for similar tags.) The upside is that if you let people just choose whatever tag they think is best they seem to actually add the metadata!
Or, in other words, controlled vocabularies make sense in a theoretical way, but they don't actually work in practice because people always find the controlled vocabulary to be too rigid. Anyone have a counter example?
- jim 1-14-2005 7:56 pm
Here's a tempered sort of anti-folksonomies post from Louis Rosenfeld, and a rebuttal I largely agree with from Clay Shirky, who writes:
- jim 1-14-2005 8:03 pm
The Shirky link is the same as Rosenfeld--
Interesting--I remember your semantic web posts and was wondering where the concept went before all this surfaced. I haven't been following flickr but look at delicio.us links all the time. More amazing stuff than one could ever see.
- tom moody 1-14-2005 8:24 pm
Thanks. Link fixed.
Yeah, I've really changed my mind on this one. I guess that's not such a bad thing.
Similarly, I used to believe very much in deep file system hierarchies. That is: lots of folders, and folders in folders, to organize your stuff. Like your summer trip photos should be located on your hard drive in the directory /home/photos/2004/summer/trip/ or something like that. Now I lean the other way and think we should just throw everything (like all your photos) into a big pile and then use advanced search to find what we want on the fly.
So, for instance, if I was building the image system on this site over again today, I'd do it very differently. And (uncontrolled vocabulary) tags would be a big part of the system.
And BTW, the Shirky piece is typically good, and it might be historically interesting to note that this is the exact line that Jorn Barger at the now defunct Robot Wisdom used to argue all the time. Predefined data structures don't work - not because there is some theoretical problem, there isn't - but just because you don't end up using them. The problem is in the implementation, not in the theory.
I guess it takes the process of actually building stuff to realize some of these things.
- jim 1-14-2005 8:37 pm
I don't mind the hierarchies in our image system, it's especially helpful for linking to thumbnail pages. I am using the search function more and more, but 3 times out of 7 I can't remember what I named something. I like the streamlined upload page but the only downside to it is before, you had to pick a category before you could upload a pic, now I have to be really self-disciplined and remember to assign the pics to different folders after the upload.
- tom moody 1-14-2005 9:28 pm
That's a good point about categories. Being able to assign one when you upload is probably a good thing. I could make it so the option only appears if you have already made some albums.
- jim 1-14-2005 9:48 pm
That'd be good. I'm currently behind in my picture filing.
- tom moody 1-14-2005 9:54 pm