[Sigia-l] Eliminating categories in favour of tagging

[Dmitry Nekrasovski]

Jared,

Great question. In the scenario I described, tagging is to replace
categories assigned to blog posts by authors, hence is to be
producer-driven. We also have an internal tool for consumer-side
tagging, similar to del.icio.us:

http://www.smallmultiples.com/2006/03/01/i-heart-dogear/

The producer-side and consumer-side tagging are supposed to be
integrated in some way. As the blogging platform has not rolled out
yet, I can't say how tightly.

Dmitry


On 3/12/06, Jared M. Spool <jspool at uie.com> wrote:
> At 12:39 PM 3/10/2006, Dmitry Nekrasovski wrote:
> >1) The categories in question are categories in the context of
> >blogging (i.e. user-generated ones that vary on a per-blog basis),
> >rather than a central category system.
>
> Something important I'm not seeing in this discussion is who is doing the
> tagging and what is their motivation? Are the same people who benefit from
> the tags the ones who produce them?
>
> Every piece of content has one or more producers and zero or more
> consumers. (A third party may be a "librarian" who doesn't produce nor
> consume, but does classify.)
>
> Are the producers (blog post authors in this case) doing the tagging? Or
> are the consumers (blog post readers)?
>
> Tagging, when it seems to work, works best when the person doing the
> tagging is the recipient of the value of the tagging. Delicious tags are
> primarily consumer-driven and the highest value is returned to the original
> tagger when they go to find the bookmark again.
>
> Flickr tags are primarily producer-driven, but, again, most of the benefit
> is derived when the producer actually consumes their own pictures. A small
> subset of flickr tags are community driven (such as the current SXSW06 tag,
> not to be confused with the SXSW2006 tag or SXSWI06 tag or TaraHunt tag)
> when a community, through some external meme-driven force agrees on a tag
> to use.
>
> One of the factors that works against successful implementation of these
> types of things is when the benefit is derived from people other than those
> doing the work. If the consumers reap the benefit of a good tagging system,
> but the producers do all the tagging, it's likely not to work out. The
> rewards just aren't there.
>
> So, how is the tagging happening and who benefits from it?
>
> Jared
>
>
> Jared M. Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
> 4 Lookout Lane, Unit 4d, Middleton, MA 01949
> 978 777-9123   jspool at uie.com  http://www.uie.com
> Blog: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks
>
>
>


--
Dmitry Nekrasovski
http://www.smallmultiples.com