[Sigia-l] OT: Library Thing

[Alexander Johannesen]

> > Saying tagging is free is having disregard for what people themselves
> > reckon their time is worth.

On 9/29/05, Listera <listera at rcn.com> wrote:
> How can you say that?

With a loud, clear voice, actually. :)

> Nobody's forcing anybody to tag on Flickr! Where's
> Karl fast when you need him to say that it's not just economics. :-)

No, nobody forces anyone to tag on Flickr, but the question is; what
would Flickr be if no one tagged? Not the flickr we love to use as a
tagging heaven. It's not that I don't love the free (as in freedom)
tagging movement, I just don't believe it is free (as in beer).

> The idea here is that whether it's low-cost, near-free or free, the work is
> voluntary and distributed. And then aggregated hopefully in some interesting
> ways.

"low-cost, near-free or free" are all relative values that needs to be
seen in the context of the complete dataset. I would say that tagging
works cheaply in a given proportion of the data, but remember all
those parts of the dataset that ain't tagged, tagged badly, wrongly,
sloppy, etc; these *lower* the value of the whole, so this is why I
question tagging as such.

So yes, sure, I've added some tags into flickr on some pictures, and I
did it for free, and all this social working-together is great and
wonderful, but the thing is, the more I tag, the more I want those
tags to actually do some good work, to actually work, and as my
awareness about the issues involved increases, my want to tag
decrease. Not saying this is the general rule for all, but certainly
something we should look into.

> > If anything, what we're observing these days are the benefits to early
> > adopters, but what happens next I'll agree we know very little about.
>
> Agreed, and that's why I say let's keep an open mind on this one.

My mind is always open, but perhaps a bit squinting due to experience
and old and bitter issues with past lovers.


Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
__ http://shelter.nu/ __________________________________________________