Tagging

I haven't got up to thing 8 yet but never mind. I thought I'd comment on Emma's post with some quotes summarizing the main pros and cons of tagging, but it would have been a bit of an oversized comment. Blog post in that case!

From the red corner:

Probably the major flaw of current folksonomy systems – and the number one gripe for those happier with more formal classification systems – is that the tagging terms used in those systems are imprecise. It is the users of a folksonomy system who add the tags, which means that the tags are often ambiguous, overly personalised and inexact. Many folksonomy sites only allow single-word metadata, resulting in many useless compound terms; the majority of tags are generally believed to be "single-use"; that is, to appear only once in the database of tags. At present there is little or no synonym (different word, same meaning) or homonym (same word, different meaning) control. The system administrators do not impose judgement about the tags chosen by users. Plural and singular forms, conjugated words and compound words may be used, as well as specialised tags and "nonsense" tags designed as unique markers that are shared between a group of friends or co-workers. The result is an uncontrolled and chaotic set of tagging terms that do not support searching as effectively as more controlled vocabularies do.

(Guy, M. & Tonkin, E., 2006. Folksonomies: tidying up tags? D-Lib Magazine, 12(1). Available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january06/guy/01guy.html)

From the blue corner:

(i) 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. [although often the same is true of browsing using classification schemes or subject headings - ed.]
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.

(ii) Perhaps the most important strength of a folksonomy is that it directly reflects the vocabulary of users. In an information retrieval system, there are at least two, and possibly many more vocabularies present (Buckland, 1999). These could include that of the user of the system, the designer of the system, the author of the material, the creators of the classification scheme; translating between these vocabularies is often a difficult and defining issue in information systems. As discussed earlier, a folksonomy represents a fundamental shift in that it is derived not from professionals or content creators, but from the users of information and documents. In this way, it directly reflects their choices in diction, terminology, and precision.

(Mathes, A., 2004. Folksonomies – cooperative classification and communication through shared metadata, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Available at http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html)

As far as I'm concerned, tagging and "traditional" approaches are both imperfect, and they complement each other.

Google Calendar

I'm an on-off user of Google Calendar. Theoretically, the fact that you can't forget to take it with you, the ability to create repeating events, the fact you can instantly overlay your calendar and any number of others, and the fact that it can seamlessly integrate with other applications ought to make it the clear winner over the paper diary, which (if small enough) retains only the advantage that you can take it with you even when you go somewhere there isn't any internet (!). But it's never really clicked for organizing my personal life, for some reason which I have yet to put my finger on.

There's a book called "The myth of the paperless office" (0262194643, 026269283X) which sadly I have only read enough of to know that it would be really interesting to read the whole of. It might contain the answer.

Doodle

I've just used Doodle to ask my wife out on a date. She might say yes, she might not.

Doodle seems like a pretty good solution to scheduling, especially if you pay for some of the extra features like auto-reminders. It reminds me of Lotus Notes, which I used when I worked at a county council. Being an organization-internal system it had the advantage that you could literally line everyone's calendars up in a stack and it would highlight places where there were gaps. You could get pretty close to that with Google Calendar I should think.

iGoogle & RSS

Here's my iGoogle page:



I already use Google Reader for following blogs but it's certainly worth trying out iGoogle as an alternative.

Commenting on blog posts is something I have indulged in a fair amount before this. I'm a parasitic type and I find myself more moved to share when someone else has started the ball rolling. So I've gone and done this on a couple of the other cam23things blogs. Onward as I have some catching up to do!

My first cam32things post

I already follow blogs with Google Reader and use social networking and bookmarking websites, but I'm aware there's a lot more out there in the Web 2.0 universe and I'm hoping that following 23 Things will make me better informed!