[Sigia-l] Eliminating categories in favour of tagging

[Alexander Johannesen]

On 3/18/06, Cindy Blue <cblue at navigationarts.com> wrote:
> This issue has been on my mind a lot lately, but it seems that every time
> the topic of tagging comes up, we refer to blogs, photos, etc., probably
> because they are common, shared experience that we can all visualize.  I am
> curious, though, has anyone had experience implementing a system with both a
> controlled vocabulary and user tagging on something like a corporate
> intranet?  I would love to hear about your experiences.

Since everybody is away at the IA summit, I thought I'd reply to this
now a bit old question ;

Yes, I have experience in this, using a controlled vocabulary of a
reasonably small size and allowing people to tag things
*starting*from* it instead of totally free tagging. More than anything
it demonstrates to me that tagging work on a surface level but never
when you dig down into it. By that I mean that the first tags attached
to any controlled vocabulary term are usual useful, but if the
structure digs deeper (tags that are structurally attached to other
tags) they become less interesting, apart from semantic analysis which
of course becomes more expensive.

Not sure this info is worth much, though, as these things are so
contextual to the users. In this case the users were already quite
fond of cataloging and classification within a great degree of
control, so perhaps tagging weren't for them.


Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
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