Understanding Folksonomies: A Deep Dive into User-Generated Classification

1. Semantic Web Technologies • Brief Readings Discussion • Class work: Research topics and Project discussion • Presentations

2. Explaining Folksonomies • Folksonomies are when you describe something, primarily for yourself • For organizing • For re-finding • Folksonomies are (mostly) flat (no hierarchy) • But others can take advantage of your work • Because they think the same way • Because they want to understand or find something semantically • Letting others define categories & classify information (for you & others) • Does time help or hinder folksonomies? • Does the beauty pageant judging effect help or hurt?

3. Kinds of Folksonomies • Broad - a lot of people are describing one object • Delicious or Shadows • Depth of descriptions if a lot of people describe (tag) the object • Lots of (potential) disagreement, but still plenty of descriptions • Social status & sharing bootstrap the process • Can or will people learn & use a descriptive vocabulary? • Narrow - one person describing (usually their own) object • Flickr, Metafilter or your own Web pages/blog posts • Depth of descriptions more idiosyncratic • Fewer descriptions, but more focused (personal) • Does personal metadata become useful to others? • Which kinds of objects are best for the two different kinds of folksonomies?

4. Social Folksonomies • Can there be any other kind? • How long can sharing last? • Can people disagree? • Is all tagging considered building a folksonomy? • Does the ad hoc nature help folksonomies grow or hurt their widespread use? • How would you use a folksonomy? • Do you use one? • Do you tag things?

5. Order out of Chaos • “We used to rely on philosophers to put the world in order. Now we’ve got information architects. But they’re not doing the work - we are.” • IA is throwing the party, but you have to show up & build the barn. • Is this and end-run around experts? • Google as folksonomy user? • Machines that automate classification & social software that makes us willing • What about personal, automatically-assigned metadata? • Would you rely on a folksonomy first to find something? • How useful is it to keep humans involved in the classification?

6. Cooperative Classification? • User-generated metadata • Users working for themselves or other users • Experts do a fine job of classification • There’s not enough experts • Experts disagree • There’s too much information • How fast can experts learn to describe things for beginners? • Users not part of the process • Users have to learn the experts vocabulary

7. Cooperative Classification (2) • Make object classification tools easier for experts • Verify rather than create classifications? • Include metadata at object creation by authors • Let users of objects create & share metadata • Show popular tags as a way to show value of the system (& sharing) • Teach people the tagging vocabulary • People are using tags in clever ways • Tags as verbs: post & buy • Tags as prompting: shop & read • Tags as votes • Me, happy, cute, sometaithurts • Should experts learn from these vocabularies too?

8. Cooperative Classification Issues • Wide varieties of tag terms (“filtering) • Acronyms • Spaces & Multiple Words • Spaces_multiple_words • Case • Synonyms • Face value tags vs. abstract ideas

9. Why Folksonomies Work • Almost no barrier to entry • Low cognitive costs (most of the time) • Supports browsing and searching • But mostly browsing • Feedback • Learning • Sharing & Community building • Can you think of other reasons why folksonomies work?

10. Ontology is Overrated • We don’t understand categorization very well • Digital objects turn regular classification on its side • What kind of “ontology” are we talking about? • Canonical, never changing? • Philosophical, AI, Semantic Web? • Categorization has its costs • Managing costs (shelf space) • Managing time (experts & users) • Aliases “@” make us think about what is real • My perspective is real, of course! • Are we tired of experts telling us what to do & leaning towards being self-centered? • So we need the “Shelf” back? • Metaphorically, we just might • Maybe we just need a new, better metaphor?

11. Overrated (again) • We need adaptive, multi-faceted classification • Digital objects defy structure (& tradition) • I mean lots of facets • Just in Time use of classification is a Google search • But it can’t always be right… can it? • Who can read our minds but ourselves? • Again, is this selfish? • Yes, and lots of people are getting rich on that. • “The Only Group that can categorize everything is everybody” • Links everywhere with URIs for everything

12. Tagging Advantages • Market Logic • Users & Time are Core Attributes • Signal Loss from Expression • Post Hoc Filtering • Merged from URLs, not categories • Bottom up classification • Merges are probabilistic, not binary • Will “Organic Organization” win?