Technology And Privacy

Tagging

A view on Tagging, illustrating the pros and cons.

It is important to consider the impact of tagging on technological society, because tagging has to do with knowledge. To understand why this is important, one should consider that things are identified for use and classification based on what they are named. Use of a name is usually considered to be an invocation of a person or things. Taxonomies are ways of understanding the world, an order that makes sense of everything. Taxonomy is primarily conducted through naming and grouping things – it is through names that taxonomies are formed. Variations in the names given to objects, concepts, or people do not just disrupt the order of a taxonomy – variations in names alter the way we look at things and the social organizations. In this case, a rose by any other name would not smell as sweet¹. The main differences which some people see between tagging systems and taxonomies is that taxonomies are exclusive and hierarchical, while tagging systems are egalitarian and inclusive².

‘Tagging’, in the context of blogging, is the process of attaching a label to a piece of information or data. On blogs and modern websites, a‘tag’ taxonomy of topics has also been called a folksonomy – that is to say, a user-created system of metadata that categorizes a collection of items (articles, bookmarks, etc). Thus, users on a blogging site that focuses on machine repair might tag articles according to the machine part – transmission, engine, tires, etc. The tags that organize a website are open to the public and are the result of a community-wide understanding of certain terms and what they refer to. Taxonomies take several forms, from a structure of informative labels, to family names that represent the family structure – ‘aunt’, ‘uncle’, etc³.The various forms that tagging takes, which I discuss later on, are folksonomic modifications of these traditional taxonomies.
Although most websites merely use a tag system to guide users to the information, some websites have begun functioning as a dictionary of tags, such as del.icio.us⁴. The tagging on this state is supposed to facilitate browsing. Del.icio.us is a URL bookmark site that incorporates user tags in categorizing the web sites. When a user decides to add a web-page to their bookmarks, they are given the option of associating any tags with that web-site. It is not required, but it is an option. A debate has arisen on del.icio.us about whether the tag should refer to a thing or the category of the thing. Tags can function several ways. Here, I draw from the comprehensive list compiled by Golder and Huberman in their excellent article “The Structure of Collaborative Tagging. For example, tags can describe the subjects of web pages, the who and what. An example of this would be ‘Queen of England’ or ‘World Hunger’. They can also identify the type of thing which is bookmarked – for example, an article versus a book. In addition, some researchers have identified blogs which refer to the author of the content. Some tags also have a refining quality – they are a refined form of another category. An example of this would be ‘fish’ and ‘small fish’. Some tags use adjectives to communicate the subjective perpective of the tagger, such as prefacing a category with ‘funny’ or ‘stupid’. Tags can also be oriented towards the performance of certain tasks, and can indicate to what purpose the content should be organized. For example, ‘carrepair’ or ‘topay’. One of the most interesting functions that tags can perform is to identify the content in relation to the tagger, tags like ‘myphotos’ or ‘myblog’.

Although folksonomic tagging seems like a vibrant and interesting idea, it can also generate a number of problems. Just as in the early days of internet web searches, a huge amount of material which is only vaguely related to the original search may appear. For example, if one looks at ‘light’ on del.icio.us, there are several sights related to luggage, several about software for Mac OS, some about digital photography, a teaching guide for physics and astronomy, and an informational advertisement for light-sensitive software. It becomes apparent that the tagging systems, although they seem to point towards a more ‘intuitive’ form of searching, is not free of flaws. Some of the flaws stem from the ‘intuitive’ nature of searching and creating tag taxonomies. Not all people interpret words and names the same way, and people whoa re involved in sub-culture, counter-culture, and alternative groups often have highly original vocabulary to refer to everyday things. In fact, some writers have noted that the peculiarities of the tagging system mean that it is essential to view the information for a period of time before becoming capable of using it². Despite the fact that these are collaboratively created systems, that does not mean that each individual has an automatic understanding of the sensibility by which the tags are created. In additional, the ability of a folksonomic tagging system to become universally accessible is predicated on their being some sort of dictionary against which the meaning of the tags can be checked (even if that dictionary is generated by cultural consensus). To be universally accessible, user-created tagging systems end up needing to appeal to a ‘higher authority’ than the individual tagger. This could mean either that this kind of tagging will never become universal, or that it cannot hope to do so and still maintain the presence of the individual tagger.

Two of the specific problems are polysemy and synonymy. In the first case, that of polysemy, the problem is when one word can refer to several different things. For example, a cat can either mean a feline animal or an irritating woman. In the same vein, ‘to be catty’ can mean either that a thing has the characteristics of the feline, or that it is argumentative and irrational. Synonymy refers situation in which multiple words have the same meaning – for example, television and T.V. Both mean the same thing, yet using one or the either could impact the search results².

Different sites use tags to indicate different things. While del.icio.us keeps track of information and articles, like a browser, other sites like EVDB⁵ keep events, holidays, and calendars tagged. That way, one can look up parties or events that have a particular interest. In this situation, the generality of the user created tagging system is of great benefit – if one searches ‘parties’, that is exactly what one gets, and more specific information can be found from there on.

Some have noted that tagging works incredibly well as a taxonomy insofar as it is never possible for it to be overwhelmed⁶. Traditional taxonomies, like the Linnaeus system of biological classification, are always capable of being stumped by something that does not fit into any existing categories. What is original about the user-created metadata system is that it is capable of infinite expansion. Of course, this is part of the reason that there are so many problems with specificity in tag searches. However, the power of a structure of classification which is capable of absorbing everything into its own structure should not be underrated.
However, the tag system is still problematic for a different reason. When users generate tags, they are creating more and more titles under which to find information. Therefore, the information can more and more easily get lost. For example, users of flickrhttp⁷ can create their own taxonomies of pictures, based on tags. The more tags they use to identify groups and subgroups of pictures, the more difficult it can become to remember under which tag the picture that is desired can be found⁸.

We can see that there are a number of pros and cons to taxonomies which function according to tags that come out of folksonomies. For one thing, there is a sense of user-created organizations. If we think of structures as something that inform and restrict the way we can look at things, it is reassuring to know that there is at least an evolving mode of classification which cannot be restricted. Tag systems are limited only by the linguistic imagination of the people who deploy them. They can consist mainly of standard terms, or they can be terms that carry a particular association or meaning for the individual or individuals in the social group. As a sort of code, more obscure tags can function as a screening messages which prevents those who are not ‘in the know’ from getting too deeply into the information of the group.
However, the problems with these online folksonomies are many. They range from the technical – the inability of tag browsers to account for synonyms and be really meaning-sensitive – to the more theoretical questions about how such individuated and de-centered categorization affects the development of group and individual identities⁹. For example, if one takes a tag to be an individualized sense of the nature of a thing, then it is a furthering of the development of the individual. However, insofar as that individual expression is always subsumed into a tagging system, the individual becomes absorbed into the larger whole. This does not mean that tagging actually results in the creation of ‘group-unity’. The question (to which there is so far no sufficient explanation) is whether the individual is erased in the creation of the system or whether the individual expression remains unique. If it remains unique, then how could a tagging system which is essentially folksonomic ever result in a universally usable system?

It seems to me that to a large extent, the proponents of the tagging system laud it as a revolutionary structure. The problem with prior structures of classifying information is that it has always proved incapable of giving expression to the individual. There is a need to attempt to uncover a structure which does not end up erasing the individual in the functioning of the structure. For many, tagging, that is, user-created metamedia, allows individual input in the creation of the definition of the world in cyberspace. How things are organized and how they are named affects their definition and use, and those who are the most optimistic about tagging hope that it can provide for a certain preservation of individuality¹.

References:

¹ Ontology is Overrated.

Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet, March 2005.

² The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems.

Paper discussing the different aspects of the structure of Tagging systems.

³ Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata.

Adam Mathes,Computer Mediated Communication - LIS590CMC, December 2005.

⁴ Del.icio.us.

Del.icio.us page.

⁵ eventful page

© 2005 EVDB, Inc.

⁶ Creating a Folksonomy

: striatic, December 15, 2004 04:22 PM

⁷ flikr.com

official fliker page

⁸ Paolo Massa’s Blog.

Paolo Massa,November 30, 2004,03:42 PM.

⁹ A new approach to metadata.

patrik, 12:51 PM,February 28, 2005.

Posted by khalaba at November 4, 2005 10:15 AM | TrackBack