October 16, 2005
Scott Golder and Bernardo Huberman: "The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems"
Golder, Scott and Bernardo Huberman. 2006. "The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems." Journal of Information Science
Abstract:
Collaborative tagging describes the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content. Recently, collaborative tagging has grown in popularity on the web, on sites that allow users to tag bookmarks, photographs and other content. In this paper we analyze the structure of collaborative tagging systems as well as their dynamical aspects. Specifically, we discovered regularities in user activity, tag frequencies, kinds of tags used, bursts of popularity in bookmarking and a remarkable stability in the relative proportions of tags within a given url. We also present a dynamical model of collaborative tagging that predicts these stable patterns and relates them to imitation and shared knowledge.
Notes:
This article looks at the relationship between tagging and taxonomy, with an emphasis on collaborative tagging (i.e. anyone can add a tag, not just the person creating the text or saving it). They argue that collaborative tagging is more non-hierarchical and inclusive.
They also address the relationship of power and authority to tagging. Categorizing or indexing has been around for quite some time, but only authorities like librarians or the author get to add keywords to documents. Collaborative tagging changes that. "Collaborative tagging is the practice of allowing anyone - especially consumers - to freely attach keywords or tags to content."
The next section is devoted to the cognitive and classification issues of hierarchies, polysemous words, synonymy.
The bulk of the paper looks at del.icio.us - stability in tags across users, across individual items, trends in bookmarking. There's a fantastic section on the different types of tags that were observed in del.icio.us:
- Identifying what (or who) it is about
- Identifying what it is (article, blog, book)
- Identifying who owns it
- Refining categories (numbers)
- Identifying qualities or characteristics (scary, funny)
- Self reference (mystuff, mycomments)
- Task organizing (toread, jobsearch)
Basically, the article is not that deep but given how little work on tagging there is, it's a great first start.
Category: tagging
Posted by zephoria at October 16, 2005 5:23 PM
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