Atomiq: visual folksonomy explanation
"I came up with this diagram to show the differences between tagging approaches ... On the vertical axis, we have tags and whether they are public or private. On the horizontal axis, we have the stuff you would tag in these systems (either yours, other people's, or a mixture). Flickr sits in the middle since it allows you to tag your contacts' photos as well as your own, and to keep some photos (and presumably tags) private. Del.icio.us, of course, lets you tag your own stuff if you want to. I put Furl in the lower right quadrant because it seems to be the only system that lets you keep private tags of others' stuff (properly, it should be closer to Flickr)."
(Gene Smith, 24 January 2005)
[Furl now belongs to Diigo.]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
A folksonomy is an integrative technique
"A folksonomy is an integrative technique used for organising online content. The technique works through allowing content to be indexed in a multi-taxonomic manner. While a taxonomy unifies content through compliance to a single common ontology (index system), a folksonomy integrates content through the juxtaposition and intersection of various taxonomies (index systems). With a folksonomy content within a web site (digital photos, mp3 audio files, 'podcasts' etc.) can attract multiple indexes that are able to contest and collide with each other. Information producers and consumers can assign keyword tags to content according to their own ontological frameworks (without the need for an agreed compliance). In this way folksonomies are able to respond to generative and associative impulses. They provide a means for integrating heterogeneous content based on a principle of good company rather than on a logic of compliance and unity."
(Simon Perkins, 31 July 2008, unpublished PhD thesis)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Folksonomies: Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata
"Although a folksonomy is not a controlled vocabulary, and certainly does have limitations, there are important strengths that are important to understanding the appeal and utility of such systems.
Browsing vs. Finding
The first is serendipity. While the controlled vocabulary issues discussed above may hamper findability, browsing the system and its interlinked related tag sets is wonderful for finding things unexpectedly in a general area. In researching this paper, exploring the bookmarks tagged with 'folksonomy' on Delicious, there were many recent resources from a wide variety of authors and sites that I likely would never have been exposed to.
There is a fundamental difference in the activities of browsing to find interesting content, as opposed to direct searching to find relevant documents in a query. It is similar to the difference between exploring a problem space to formulate questions, as opposed to actually looking for answers to specifically formulated questions. Information seeking behavior varies based on context. While one could evaluate a folksonomy in a system like Delicious or Flickr by using specific queries from users, and then evaluating which documents tagged with keywords they choose are relevant to the query, that would ignore the broader set of browsing activities that the system seems to be stronger in. Measuring the utility of that aspect would likely require qualitative research in the form of interviews or ethnographic study of users, and is an area of further study. It would also require comparisons not to search based information retrieval systems, but to browsing activities using other categorization and classification schemes."
(Adam Mathes, December 2004)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Categories and Tags on Document Sharing Websites
"I usually hate being forced to choose a category from a drop down menu. It smacks of technocracy where the system designer is unnecessarily imposing, subtly or not, a narrow view of how data should be described. This clumsily reasserts the unequal relationship between the developer and user. Instead of being empowered to input your own stuff and personalise your profile, a poor uploading experience can leave you feeling like a patronised data entry clerk. I'm also convinced that it's not the cleverest way to organise content
...
Categories are only descriptions, they are not empty containers compelling somebody to fill them. If there isn't a perfect category available, which is nearly all of the time, you just have to choose the nearest. It's annoying, but common experience."
(Andy Roberts)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
BibSonomy: supporting the sharing of bookmarks and bibliographies
"BibSonomy is run by the Knowledge & Data Engineering Group of the University of Kassel, Germany. This system is intended to support everyone, but in particular researchers, in sharing bookmarks and bibliographies. One main reason is that we have to deal with bibliographic data all the time, needed a more coherent way to manage our bibtex data. Another - even more important - reason for setting up BibSonomy is that social resource sharing systems are very popular nowadays, but do still lack theoretical foundations. Our aim is to tackle the research challenges that arise around systems like BibSonomy, and to provide more sophisticated support for tasks like browsing, searching, ranking, and community discovery."
(BibSonomy)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
