Tagspaces, blessed tags, and more
Tags are being overloaded today as info-routers -- a loosely-coupled, loosely-typed way of shunting around data. People are excited by this, because it just works. For the record, I'm not against tags, I just have some concerns about how current implementations are susceptible to spam, and really am more interested in the next step beyond -- personal and shared tagspaces.
This is not quite topics in the sky or anything like that, but more of a pointer or agreement that a group has decided to mean the same thing when they're using tags. As well, an agreement that they've decided to populate/aggregate a particular tagspace (instead of everyone using someone else's tagspace). For example, What's Web 2.0? might create a glossary defining terms (== tags) used there, and I could point all the tags that I use locally at their tagspace (this last link will be up in a bit...).
I talked a little bit about the del.icio.us use of the "for:username" tag while explaining my use of links. That got me thinking, along with observing how Flock might eventually deal with groups, about blessing or formalizing the use of "for:" and perhaps "forgroup:" as standard usages.
There is background for this, in the use of tagging that acts as a review or rating (what's the link for this? rating:6 plus Amazon ASIN), as well as intense use of place name and/or latitude/longitude usage to tie together information such as photos or blog posts to map data, a.k.a. geotagging.
Permissions is the tricky part of this. People can spam me directly by adding "for:borismann" to their del.icio.us links. A group would have the same issue. But, if we can set those issues aside for the moment -- basically leaving it up to the implementing system on how to deal with this (e.g. friend and group lists that only allow certain accounts to do this) -- this might be an interesting way to form another level of organization around "just" simple tagging.
Finally, a ramble on "blessed" tags. It's a bit like a bottom up taxonomy creation and/or knowledge gardening -- watch tags form, then bless certain ones with special displays that give people an incentive to stick to the blessed formats of tags. For example, on 43 Places I stick to a personal format of making sure all eating places are tagged as "restaurant". Helper displays for metro areas would be quite easy to show -- e.g. top 10 most visited restaurants for Vancouver (teaser: and might actually be extracted remotely with a forthcoming API). Still, the spam issue. How to give people anti-tagging powers? Hey, I know -- we'll bless the "not:restaurant" format! A whole new level of tag fighting...
Similar
Comments
Consider using the power of the masses
remember reading an article that stated a large group will choose a more effecient path than an individual through a maze, perhaps you can apply some of that thinking to tags
What I am suggesting is you allow everyone to modify the tags you use. There will be the inevitable trouble makers but on aggregate the group tags will probably be more useful. A sort of voting scheme with a minimum count required before the tag becomes visible. Or a different spin on this would be to have a pool of tags you could see being used and then let the people decide which are the most relevant.
This is essentially letting the commons tag moderate your articles (of course you maintain the trump card if you disagree with the commons) but perhaps the groups' choice of tags will make your life more simple.
I would write more but I am poaching this wifi connection and have some other things to get on today.
the social costs and benefits of info routing?
Do you want administration to be explicit? Seems like it would be gardening pebbles from dirt. Grass roots trust systems are promising. Could this become a universal authentication?
What about sabotage (groan) -- humans are too emotional. Or disparate groups (spammers or otherwise)?
Although I socialize (tag/blog/etc ;-) for myself, reaching people, particularly people that are outside my webs is personally rewarding for me -- I often learn the most from these people and situations.
I am intrigued by personal and shared tagspaces.
personal: why throw out categories, when they can evolve taggishly.
shared: what is the cost and benefits of explicit vs implicit? Do we need more spaces, additional contexts to speak to?
As always thanks for the food Boris, for thought or otherwise.
overloaded in a number of ways
Interesting. I don't know if this will seem off topic to you, but it seems nicely related to me: the semantic mediawiki's proposed link types.
I think what they're doing is relevant in that it shows a simple tag-like way to add "metadata" to tags. And, that might be a type like "review" and/or a route like "for Boris".
Not off topic
I'm not even sure I know what off topic means :P
I notice with a shudder however, that the Mediawiki stuff uses a large "S" Semantic, and includes RDF. I admit it, I'm afraid of RDF.
Tags are loose couplings for stuff that only understands the lowest common denominator of RSS feeds. If we *really* need a robust way of routing, it needs to be built as API. So, be happy with the loose coupling, or build it in a way so that both ends understand the context.
Semantic Web = semantic web
I think the MediaWiki folks are just recognizing the connection between their "tags" and the big "S" Semantic Web.
There are taxonomies and ontologies behind the popular tagging apps too--folks behind them just aren't recognizing / publicizing this (for a number of reasons, including that tags are often part of a practical application without big "S" Semantic Web goals).
When I look at the syntax of the Semantic MediaWiki links, I see tags + more (which more might or might not be a good thing, TBD). I think the del.icio.us system tags, e.g., system:media:audio, are another example of the same kind-of thing, tags + more. More is just an easy syntax for more information.
The del.icio.us folks haven't made a big deal about the taxonomy and ontology behind their system tags, but folks in the RDF community are recongizing it.
I'm not a super huge fan of RDF myself, but I think it's useful to not be afraid of it, because some interesting things will come out of it at some point.
Also, I totally agree with your comment about APIs.
The robustness of social- and me-tagging
Indeed, tag spam will inevitably become a problem for those who have no
social ties on the web. However, the more connected you are, the wider
your net of "trusted" sources -- and the more you contribute to watering
and gardening the web by proactively and helpfully tagging your own
content, the more useful tags will become.
We're at 0.2 with tags right now -- they're the first widely accepted
and used form of metadata that people are latching on to and they've only found widespread use socially in the past year. There will
inevitably be abuses, as with all easy-to-use technologies. But the
personal utility of tagging will, in my opinion, help keep the practice
of tagging a robust way of labeling and identifying content for personal and public benefit.
HTML metatags didn't work -- why? Because I would create them for other
people and robots. When I create tags on Delicious and Flickr, I do so for my friends, but
mostly for myself. There is little incentive for me to spam the system
unless I want to lose relevance and diminish the value of my time and
effort to both myself and my social connections.
Then again, if I were a spammer I'd probably spend my time on one of the other internets since most of my day would be spent mucking up everyone else's enjoyment of a shared resource.
Do I use tags for me?
I honestly don't know why I tag links -- I admitted as much in link farming the future: I'm doing it, but I don't know why. That's specific to del.icio.us -- I just turned on free-tagging on the Bryght site for our company blogs -- e.g. the drupal tag. This I know why one would do -- to make it easy for people to subscribe to the stuff that they care about. Of course, they have to trust that I am making good tag choices, which is a trust issue, and goes back to personal connections and maybe even groups and permissions.
Tags don't help me find stuff -- Google helps me find stuff. Anything else *specific* I'm looking for in the future (aka prospective search, like mentions of my name or URL), tags aren't robust enough for and too "busy" with irrelevant content (since Subject Matter Expert can't be distinguished from Small Medium Enterprise, both known as SME).
Again, I'm just pointing out some interesting observations about tags, not posting a tag backlash like Darren.
The info-router applications are the most interesting ones for me. What if tags were groups? What if I, as an admin for the "drupal" tag, could choose to reject resources that did not match the tag?
Wishful Thinking
I happen to know that Chris is working on software the version number of which is also 0.2, so I wonder if his company and tagging are syncing development.
But seriously, I wonder if the statement that "a robust way of labeling and identifying content for personal and public benefit" is more wishful thinking than prediction. First of all, though, let me say that I've argued in the first comment to Darren Barefoot's dismisal of Technorati Tags and Technorati Blogs that tags work for individuals. It works for me as a way to keep track of some of the stuff I've written and linked to, because I think I know myself well enough to know what I would have categorized something, either to find things are related to what I just wrote or linked to, or the thing itself that I wrote or linked to. It also works for filtering stuff from people I trust: I watch links that Jon Udell tags as 'screencast' because I don't want to see everything he links to—which is all great I'm sure, but overwhelming—but trust that he will correctly tag something he highlights as a screencast. (Judging by the fact that most del.icio.us users don't add a lot of value to links as I do (not customizing the title or even adding a description in most cases), I'm no doubt a del.icio.us power user, but the tools to do everything I do are easily available.) Following all items tagged as 'screencast' won't work, because I don't trust the 'wisdom of crowds' approach with regards to open systems because spammers figured out how to outlast the gardners. So in that respect it's not very robust because spam is forcing us to trust people we know rather than putting a little faith in the kindness of strangers. So personal benefit, absolutely. Public benefit is the part I'm not convinced of.
Oh, and spammers consider "mucking up everyone else's enjoyment of a shared resource" a feature, not a bug.