Lee Iverson

In Online Information Folksonomy Presentation Posted :: Personal InfoCloud Thomas Vander Wal writes about tagging, folksonomy and taxonomy and rightly points out that they are not necessarily opposed or incompatible concepts. I'd go further than him though to suggest that they are, in fact, quite compatible.

So let's start out by reiterating Vander Wal's terminology. He seems to be making the distinction between "tagging" and "folksonomy" by pointing out that tagging has been going on for a long time and that folksonomy is new, moreover that old style tagging "provided no certainty as to the vocabulary being correct in the perspective of all trying to use it." The distinction he seems to be making is between "creator-driven keywords" (tags) and something new represented by del.icio.us.

The something new is the triple: person, tag name, object. Anyone with a database background and a few minutes on del.icio.us realizes that what is going on is that there's a table for identities, one for tags and one for URLs and in the middle is an association table. The significant thing about this architecture (and the thing that seems to get Thomas to say "folksonomy") is the "tags" association table at the middle of this and its consequences. For one, whenever an individual tags an object, an entry in the association table is made for every one of the "tags" used (e.g. if user "leei" tags "http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~leei" with the words "me" and "leei", we'll get two entries of the form (leei,"me",URL) and (leei,"leei",URL) in the "tags" table. A user can add as many tags as he wants to, but all of them will be referenced to his user table entry. Similarly, an entry will be added to the "user_urls" table with the user's title and description of every URL he uses.

One of the primary consequences of the relational model and the database backend here is that queries can be made from any side of this association:

• From a user, I can see all tag names and urls;
• From a URL, I can see all users and tag_names;
• From a tag name, I can see all users and URLs;
• From a user and tag name, I can see all URLS;
• From a user and URL, I can see all tag names; and
• From a tag name and URL, I can see all users.

Now, that said, what is the relationship between this and taxonomy. Here I disagree with Vander Wal. Taxonomy is a way of managing an organizational system as a hierarchy (and he rightly points out that many taxonomies may exist within the same domain), whereas the tagging or "folksonomy" models now in place seem to completely ignore the issue of hierarchy. This is clearly a deliberate choice (see Clay Shirky for example) but is it a necessary one? I'd suggest that it is not. The fundamental nature of folksonomy is a personal organization of objects of interest using simple markers (tag names). I do not believe that this necessarily implies that there can be no expressed relations between those markers. Some of the markers may express categories in the user's mind and there may be relationships between those categories (e.g. sub- or super-category relations or mutual exclusion). As with all technologies, it is important to distinguish between the manifestations of a technology and its fundamental nature.

So, I agree that taxonomy and folksonomy are not incompatible. In fact, I believe that taxonomy can be a part of folksonomy if the user finds it useful. The oppositions here are clear, they are between authoritative or prescribed vocabularies and personal or socially constructed vocabularies and between structured, categorical organization systems and flat or unstructured organizational systems. The table below shows these two axes with representative examples of the kinds identified by these properties. Of course, these axes are by no means binary, but more or less continuous. For example, one can be completely structured as in closed database schemas or semi-structured as in various RDF models that respect certain categorical relationships but leave definitions open and relationships largely unspecified such as Dublin Core.

Of course, the above is just a starting point, a sketch. This is really much more multi-dimensional than that. There is the personal/social axis, the private/public axis, the authoritative/opportunistic axis, and a few others. I think this is ripe for exploitation. I just don't think personal, tag-driven, opportunistic organizational systems are necessarily unstructured.

Posted by Lee Iverson at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In Lowering Barriers to Participation, Bradley Horowitz points out how tagging lowers the barriers to participation and thus allows ordinary users to create useful metadata. I think he's right on here. Especially on a system such as del.icio.us, the ease of use and triviality of creating tags allows pretty much anyone to create "personally useful" metadata. As an aide memoire, that is exactly what it should allow.

Is it authoritative? Is it useful for others? That's for someone else to decide. It's easy and useful for me, and if there are natural concordances with others, I can take advantage of those. That should be enough, and is.

Posted by Lee Iverson at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My favourite little cafe is a place called "The Beanery" on the UBC campus in the middle of the Fairview residences. Sonny and Sonya, who run the place, are two wonderful friendly hosts, the atmosphere is great, and UBC wireless is usually available. It's my second office.

It's located inside the Fairview residences. The entrance to the residences is at the intersection of Fairview Ave. and Western Parkway. There's a sign there for the Beanery, but it is actually all the way in the back of the residence complex, near Pearkes Lane.

Posted by Lee Iverson at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)