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Tag! Are You It? Taxonomies & Folksonomies in Practice

Tag! Are You It? Taxonomies & Folksonomies in Practice Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President, May 28, 2008. Overview. About Alexander Street Press Is there value in social tagging? What lies behind the value Some practical examples The future. Alexander Street Press. Sociology.

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Tag! Are You It? Taxonomies & Folksonomies in Practice

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  1. Tag! Are You It? Taxonomies & Folksonomies in Practice Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President, May 28, 2008

  2. Overview • About Alexander Street Press • Is there value in social tagging? • What lies behind the value • Some practical examples • The future

  3. Alexander Street Press Sociology World Literature Performing Arts, Drama, and Film Religion American Civil War Social and Cultural History Black Studies Women’s History Music Counseling

  4. The People vs. The Machine vs

  5. The masses speak… “All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource.” Wikipedia, entry on social bookmarking, May 24th, 2008

  6. The masses speak… “All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand the content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource.” Wikipedia, entry on social bookmarking, May 24th, 2008 • Not all tag based classifications are done by humans – machine based tagging is large and growing • Many humans don’t understand or agree on ‘the content of the resource’ • Who’s to say what the content actually is? • Who’s to say what a resource is? • Social tagging requires computers to leverage collective human input using algorithms amongst other tools.

  7. Actually it’s not the machine vs. the human – it’s the machine and the human

  8. Another view…

  9. Is there value in social tagging?

  10. >3,000 photos of Alexandria, VA

  11. Performance Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search?, Paul Heymann, Georgia Koutrika, and Hector Garcia-MolinaDept. of Computer Science, Stanford University

  12. Folksonomy

  13. Cirrus on delicious Item # 22 describes cirrus (the cloud) 7 people tagged it.

  14. Citeulike

  15. Taxonomy vs. Folksonomy

  16. Effectiveness # of users * frequency of use * quality of use- (100 * bad use) ? Effectiveness Subject understanding * MLS training ? Taxonomy vs. Folksonomy Effectiveness Folksonomies Taxonomies Popularity 49.7 m users (E-Bay) 2.7 Bn searches per month (Google)

  17. Looking closer…

  18. Internet Trust ‘anti pattern’ Effectiveness 3. Unwashed masses start using it High 4. System almost breaks 2. Benefits from being non-hierarchical, easy participation, quality participants Medium 5. Controls put in place 1. System started by trusted parties Low Time AfterThe Journal of the Future, Geoffrey Bilder, SSP, 2005

  19. Social Tagging • Personalization • Speed • Discovery • Reach • Versatility • No standard keywords • No standard structure/hierarchy • Unorthodox and personal tags • Multiple Meanings • Mis-tagging due to spelling • Synonym/antonym confusion • Advertising • Spamming The Mixed The Bad The Good

  20. Human and machine interactions • Passive • Most commented, bloggede-mailed, viewed, cited… • Terms culled from associated articles, comments… • Measuring link traffic, use, search terms matched to results. • Data mining, authority inference, Active User assigns terms User selects terms User comments Delici.ous, flickr Google’s Page rank, etc…

  21. Leveraging existing processes… Muchsocialtagging is a by-product of other processes • Central place to store your bookmarks (Delicious) • Place to share your photographs (Flickr) • Place to meet friends (My Space) • Store your bibliography (Zotero, Citeulike) • Have fun (Google Image Labeller) • Give students classwork (Alexander Street Press)

  22. Activity vs. Passivity Zotero Citeulike ASP Playlists Google Search Delicious ASP Submission tools Mixed Passive Active

  23. Issues – user tagging Tags President? Philadelphia? Shirts? Women’s Rights?

  24. Issues – granularity

  25. Different views of the same item Long term factors influencing combustion and burn rates in North American forests. David Jones, Journal of Forest Husbandry, Sept 1999. OSH-ROM(Occupational Health and Safety) CAB – (Husbandry) Biosis (Species) Agricola (Agriculture)

  26. Humans are good at…

  27. What works… • Playlists on ASP’s music and video products – >20,000 users • Over 120,000 playlists created so far • 1,000 created by ASP • 42,000 user created • 80,000+ derivative playlists

  28. Example – Dance in Video

  29. Playlists

  30. Playlists

  31. Playlists

  32. Summary

  33. Social Tagging evolution Social Network Trackback, RSS Feeds Currency Importance/Trust Descriptive Power Popularity Larger networks Suggestions, mapping

  34. The future of social tagging… • A lot to offer • It works best • In (very) large networks • When it is a byproduct or alongside another process • It will always ends up being (partially) controlled • Network effects aren’t open to most of us • Discipline focus is the best way to add value

  35. Man empowered by machine

  36. www.alexanderstreet.com

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