A Closer Look at Tagging
Having read the recent posts of my classmates on social bookmarking, I wanted to look more closely at the process of tagging content.One of the most illuminating articles I have seen was Social Bookmarking Tools (I) A General Review (Hammond, et all). It begins by reviewing the development of links and of shared taxonomy’s such as Yahoo’s directory. Structures such as these have been moved out of the lime light as search engines have become more useful.
As the article moves on to users tagging the content of others, it mentions one of the most compelling features of a Web 2.0 service. The more social bookmarking sites are used, the more value they accrue. The challenges to evolving a robust set of tagged links are many:
Tags are free form labels. There is no controlled vocabulary. I got snagged with this issue right away when I was tagging my modest set of links. I had been using the tag bridges but later switched to bridge. Sure enough, each tag brought up a different set of links. Ouch.
Tags also produce a flat namespace. Unlike a regular taxonomy, there is no real hierarchy to a set of tagged data. We tend to rely more on an intuitive approach to finding the right thing. I kind of like this, but you never feel like you’re being at all exhaustive.
Some structure can be introduced to tags. Del.icio.us allows you to bundle your tags. I have found it helpful to use a handful of bundle categories to help things feel less loose. There are no formal rules for bundling at this point. It is up to the individual how to tag their tags.
Right now, there is a strong English presence in the tags used on some Web 2.0 systems. But incorporating multiple languages into a freeform structure will be tricky.
Up to this point, tag spamming hasn’t been an issue. The authors recommend that we all remain diligent as tagging becomes a more mainstream way to look for things.
Looking ahead, some great suggestions are made by Lars Pind on improving the practice of tagging:
Perhaps a site such as Del.icio.us could suggest tags for us, and expose us to the global set of existing tags.
It would be very useful for synonyms to be given to compliment our tags.
A hierarchy could be inferred from the way tags are used. A site may be able to figure out that beef and pork seem to be tags one level below the meat tag.
A couple of other general comments on social bookmarking should be made.
As a teacher, I am intrigued by the power of sharing links amoung students and having them tap into the use of tags. The challenge in working with Elementary students is that the user interfaces are highly textual and busy. If I were to include an experience with social bookmarking in a project, I would certainly start with our Grade 6s. I have a sense that the process of using tags and adding tags to their own links would be a great way to generate some higher mental activity and some good discussion. Could we get some sharing of bookmarks happening between schools? Time to talk with my colleagues.
I am very happy with the quality of content that I have seen Del.icio.us users link to. In my searching for Grade 3 science content, most of the sites that came up were very useable and unique. I had never seen about half of them before. I get a sense that the user base acting as a filter works well.
The portability of the bookmarks is a real plus. Adding bookmarks to my Del.icio.us account is so easy. I have already used it to grab some links that I found on a laptop in the mountains this weekend. Our school already uses a web site to organize pre-selected links. I’m not sure if we’re ready to leave that tool behind, but I do have lots to think about.
posted by John Lobe @ 10:42 PM
5 Comments:
Hi John,
I see this intersection between traditional taxonomies and folksonomies as the most interesting part of this work for librarians and researchers - my background is the MLIS so I often think about this in relation to bigger library and cataloguing and classification issues.
It will be interesting to watch this play out over the next few years.
Being able to access and add bookmarks from any computer is such a huge advantage of social bookmarking. Now I just have to remind myself to use it this way, rather than thinking only about my own computer's list of favourites.
John, can you explain what you mean by "I had been using the tag bridges but later switched to bridge"? I assume that you mean you use a tag that links a phrase with underscore between them rather than mashing words together but I could be wrong. Arlene
John:
Thanks for the Hammond article on tagging. It is a bit confusing to me at times. At elementary I would only be using tagging likely with the grade 7's (maybe the 5/6)although I might bring the others to networking sites to look at and discuss. It would be great if we could create picture icons for the younger students in social bookmarking.
I too found by networking and searching, there were new sites I hadn't seen and found very useful. On Wed I was away from school, my 6year old has pink eye and the left side of her face was completely swollen, the doctor thought she might have had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic (luckily that wasn't the case and all is under control). Enough about that, it was 1:30 in the morning and I had to create lesson plans for the TOC. I went on my network and found some excellent sites. I printed a story on the history of leap year with a quiz attached, information on black history month with books to research and a fun wordsearch on Valentines day. It was great and the TOC loved it. "Thanks Val for the detailed lesson plans and notes. I grabbed an extra copy of your worksheets as they went over so well with the classes." Yeah for social bookmarking. I believe it was a site Joanne had tagged. Thanks!
Cheers
Val
By the way John, the website I used for the TOC plans was ABC teach (I have tagged it and its on my network)
Cheers
Val
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