Tag, you're it! - Reflections on Golder and Huberman's article - week 8

Sorry for the cheesy title - I couldn't help myself! : )

Okay, I know I said last week that I found tagging to be more difficult than it looks...but after reading this article, I'm even more convinced that it's a complex process, that if done well, makes finding what you want (text, images, videos) on the Internet a lot easier - this is huge in the research world!

I found this article (and their study) really interesting. Here are some things that really stood out for me:

This paragraph in particular stuck with me:
"Items often lie between categories or equally well in multiple categories. The lines one ultimately draws for oneself reflect one’s own experiences, daily practices, needs and concerns. Many experiences are shared with others and may be nearly universal within a culture or community, similar ways of organizing and sensemaking do result; after all, societies are able to collectively organize knowledge and coordinate action" (Golder and Huberman)

Tagging is sensemaking and sensemaking is influenced by social factors (Golder and Huberman).

This is so simply put, but yet is the best description of tagging I've read so far.

It’s done by regular people, not experts, for regular people. It allows people to find things using terms that a collective group would use. I think it speaks to all of us, rather than having one expert grouping things based on a system or rule.

As the authors point out, collective tagging allows us to learn from one another through sharing and organizing information.

I like how tagging is done for personal use, but through that, it can benefit others (help them find things that they also enjoy) – it really is a great sharing tool.
But I guess a limitation of tagging is the fact that the tags are only useful if the tagger makes sense of information that connect to others (shared sensemaking).

THE STUDY ON DELICIOUS
Some things I found interesting:

"users’ lists of tags can be considered descriptive of the interests they hold as well as of their method of classifying those interests" (Golder and Huberman)

"Users’ tag lists grow over time, as they discover new interests and
add new tags to categorize and describe them" (Golder and Huberman) - I wonder if this is partly due to the fact that we become more comfortable with the tagging process as we engage in it more.
Interesting how the number of tags a person has can reflect his/her own interest level. Makes sense, so simple yet so revealing for data collectors.

"Because sensemaking is a retrospective process, information must be observed before one can establish its meaning" (Golder and Huberman) - Which is why I think tagging can be such a difficult task.

The Kinds of Tags Used
Wow, I did not know there were so many categories of tags. From my limited tagging experience, my tags usually fell into the category of "Identifying What (or Who) it is About".

I did use “identifying qualities and characteristics” on Shelfari because I thought this would be meaningful to students when looking for a book. I guess we do have to consider who our audience members are when we are tagging – that is, what would be most useful to the group of people we are trying to reach?

I agree with the authors – the kinds of tags used in Delicious are separated into the categories of extrinsic and intrinsic tags (relative to the tagger). I’m curious, is one kind of tag more useful than the other?

Consistency of Tagging
"This stability has important implications for the collective
usefulness of individual tagging behavior" (Golder and Huberman)

It’s fascinating to see that as more people bookmark and tag a URL – the tags become more fixed and stable. You would think that if there were more tags then it would be more chaotic as people bring their own ideas and thoughts.
I guess,there is something to the idea of collective agreement (due to imitation and shared knowledge) – this reminds me of our discussion around Wikipedia, which I think, also relies on consistency and agreement among the people.

"Part of the reason these stable patterns emerge is that the ideas
and characteristics that are represented in tags are stable. As the
ideas themselves change, these stable states may likewise change" (Golder and Huberman) - Interesting point to consider. As technology advances, will there be so many new ideas one day that we won't be able to share a common a language anymore?

A Possible Limitation of Tagging in Delicious
I also found the fact that we can't go back and "re-tag" previous bookmarks in Delicious could contribute to the limitations of tagging. As we get better at tagging, what if we discover that our previous tags aren't as accurate as they could be? Could this affect it's level of connectivity and usefulness for others?