Comments on: Self-classification on the web

By: Aristotle Pagaltzis

Aristotle Pagaltzis — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 09:17:12 +0000

I think we will end up with tagging bubbles in a sea of spam: tags will remain useful in one's personal closed space, even if they won't be on the open web.

By: David Megginson

David Megginson — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 20:56:33 +0000

In reference to Prentiss’s comment, my impression was that Don was talking about letting people invent classification schemes (i.e. making up tags instead of using a pre-written scheme). My point is that any classification scheme, from folksonomies to Dublin Core to Library of Congress, runs into trouble when people can self-classify and the benefits of lying outweight the potential costs. That’s why search engines are likely to have to continue to ignore metadata of any kind to return useful results, at least for the more popular queries.

By: Bob DuCharme

Bob DuCharme — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 16:32:09 +0000

As a follow-on to what Norm wrote: we have to consider the possibility that as systems like Technorati get more efficient in the handling and use of this metadata, there will be more incentives to use the metadata system, and therefore more incentives to lie. Formerly honest adders of metadata won’t necessarily start lying, but of the new people looking to take advantage of the increasingly useful system, we can expect to see more and more liars. (I won’t be one, though, I swear… yeah, that’s the ticket…)

By: Prentiss Riddle

Prentiss Riddle — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 16:01:02 +0000

Nicely said. A related way of putting it, although perhaps not quite so pessimistic in its intent, is Don Turnbull's bon mot that "the inmates are tagging the asylum".

By: Norman Walsh

Norman Walsh — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 15:43:30 +0000

I heard Tim asking a different question. Even assuming everybody tells the truth, are tags useful? Do they actually help readers find the information they’re interested in more accurately or more quickly than your favorite search engine?

I don’t know. I can’t get Technorati to recognize the tags in my posts
and getting feedback from their support alias is more of a struggle than
I have patience for more than about once a month.