1. of 49 lecture 18: tagging and folksonomy

2. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘132 metadata is: “structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource” (NISO) it allows systems to collocate related information, and helps users find relevant information

3. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘133 metadata ways of creation generally in two ways: professional creation (professionals working with complex, detailed rule sets and vocabularies) author creation (authors of documents provide metadata along with their creations) are ontologies the result of that???

4. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘134 metadata third (new) way user-‍created metadata users of the documents and media create metadata for their own individual use that is also shared throughout a community

5. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘135 folksonomy what is it? it is a people's taxonomy is composed of terms in a flat namespace there is no hierarchy, no parent-‍child or sibling relationships between these terms

6. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘136 folksonomy what is it? the set of terms (called tags) that a group of users tagged content with, they are not a predetermined set of classification terms or labels

7. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘137 folksonomy … the cumulative force of all the individual tags can produce a bottom-up, self-organized system for classifying items on the web

8. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘138 what is tagging? introduction a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information - such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file (Wikipedia) tagging – to mark with a tag; to label, identify, or recognize with or as if with a tag - a unique and powerful way of organizing information

9. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘139 what is tagging? tagging system three “components” - users - resources - tags

10. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1310 tagging system users the people who employ a tagging system (sometimes also called taggers) – they create the tags, and sometimes they add resources have a variety of different interests, needs, goals, and motivations – but they are trying to achieve some larger goal – such as sharing a photo or labeling a document so they can find it later

11. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1311 tagging system resources are items that users tag a resource can be just about anything – a book, a Web page, a video, or even a location within each tagging system, resources often share some common properties – they are books, or photos, or …

12. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1312 tagging system tags the keywords added by users are tags can be just about any kind of term, they can be descriptions of the resource’s subject matter, its location, its intended user, a reminder, or something else entirely – can be individual words or phrases tags are essentially metadata about the resource

13. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1313 tagging system tags tags are more than just metadata in an application – they are a tool people use to track, share, and find information

14. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1314 tagging system tag cloud is a method of presenting tags where the more frequently used tags are emphesized

15. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1315 tagging system tag cloud – example www.wordle.net

16. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1316 tagging system … all tagging happens in the context of a system, and the system defines what kind of tagging can take place for example, the system may allow users to add their own resources or not, may allow to tag any resource or not, may forbid certain kinds of tags

17. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1317 tagging system perspectives … tagging sits at the intersection of three established fields Social Software Personal Information Management Information Architecture tagging

18. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1318 tagging system information architecture the structural design of shared information environments and the art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranet, online communities, and software to support usability and findability information architects focus on using controlled vocabularies, search-and-browse systems

19. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1319 tagging system social software applications that people use to communicate, collaborate, and share online people who design social software are interested in facilitating group interaction within the system

20. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1320 tagging system personal information management “refers to the practice and study of the activities people perform in order to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use information items such as documents, web pages, e-mail messages …” (Wikipedia) they are programs for managing information and methods for keeping yourself on track – help you file, track, and find your information when you need it

21. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1321 tagging system tensions … personal social do people tag primary for their own benefit? or are they motivated to share information with a group …?

22. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1322 tagging system tensions … idiosyncratic standard should tags be unique? or should be standardized so they can be used for browsing and searching?

23. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1323 tagging system tensions … freedom control does the system give users complete freedom? or does it influence or control their tags?

24. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1324 tagging system tensions … amateur expert how qualified are the people who do tagging? should tags contributed by amateurs count as much as tags created by experts?

25. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1325 tagging why matters it is popular it is multifaceted it is flexible it is also made for the stream – the constant flow of information we experience online

26. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1326 tagging motivation ease of use - tags are simple just typing few words - tags are flexible tags can be whatever you need them to be - tags are extensible you can always add new tags - tags can be aggregated … can be messy and may not conform to any recognizable pattern

27. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1327 tagging motivation managing personal information - do not need to consider the whole categorization scheme, you just add tags - you can add any tags, instead of finding the one category that is the best fit - re-categorization is easy if we make a mistake

28. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1328 tagging motivation collaborating and sharing - you can explore topics using the tags of other users - other users may be experts - you may use tags to connect with other users who share interests having fun expressing yourself

29. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1329 tagging system architecture requires to set up rules about your users (who they are and how they join the system), your resources (how they are added to the system), and tags (who can tag which resources) how users interact with each other

30. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1330 tags as metadata kinds of metadata metadata: - helps you (or others) find data you want - helps you manage your data - lets you relate your data to other data you own, as well as other data out there in the world

31. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1331 tags as metadata kinds of metadata descriptive – provide details about the resource administrative – used to manage a collection of resources (for example, date a resource was acquired, the person who owns the rights to the resource) structural – used to associate the resource with other resources (for example, volume of books, maps of how individual files relate to each other)

32. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1332 tags as metadata kinds of metadata tag typeexample descriptivewebdesign, drama, sushi gardening, music resourceblog, book, video, photo ownership/sourcenytimes, genesmith (author) opinioncool, funny, lame self-referencemystuff, mine task organizingtodo, work play/performancehelo3, poetry

33. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1333 tags … taxonomies and controlled vocabularies two kinds of classification systems – define relationships between terms help us understand and navigate concepts by making language less ambiguous, by connecting concepts, and by capturing the relationships between objects observed in the real world

34. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1334 tags … controlled vocabularies a system for managing the meaning of words – it removes ambiguity of language synonym rings – give two or more words an equivalent meaning authority files – as above but one of the words is identified as a preferred term

35. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1335 tags … taxonomies establishes parent-child relationships between terms, are typically hierarchical

36. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1336 tags … enriching taxonomy with tags bubble-up approach tags are attached to a resource, for example, a song those tags are “bubble-up” from several songs to describe their parent item, album album tags are then bubbled up again to describe the artist relationships between resources are preserved while capturing the descriptive terms of users

37. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1337 folksonomy introduction it is a term used to describe the bottom-up classification systems that emerge from social tagging

38. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1338 folksonomy introduction the relationships between tags are inferred based on their usage patterns no formal relationships parent-child like in taxonomy no equivalences between terms as in a controlled vocabulary

39. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1339 folksonomy introduction ajax webdesign css HIV cxcr4 ccr5

40. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1340 folksonomy - independence users are free to choose their tags some systems offer suggestions – a tool aimed to help users add tags more easily and efficiently

41. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1341 folksonomy - aggregation pulling all the tags together in an automated way – this creates folksonomy manual sampling of tags, few users – not a folksonomy – based on users’ activities and interests

42. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1342 folksonomy - inference relationships between tags are inferred from their use they are based on the language and usage patterns of real users

43. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1343 folksonomy - methods to infer semantic relationships - counting tags to see which is most popular - co-occurrence counts which tags are used together (loose approximation of the associative relationships) - clustering of tags that have a high probability of co- occurence

44. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1344 folksonomy when to use - nomenclature is uncertain or evolving - dynamic information space - semantic relationships are not critical - multiple viewpoints are desirable - you can tap in an active base of users

45. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1345 from folksonomy to ontology super-class relationships tags that co-occur with other tags often are thought to be more general than more specific-tags that co- occur with other tags less often

46. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1346 from folksonomy to ontology super-class relationships for example "music" co-occurs with both "piano" and "guitar", and as such can be suspected being a super-class of both on the other hand, "piano" probably does not co- occur with more possible tags than "music" and usually co-occurs with "music" and so it likely is a subclass

47. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1347 from folksonomy to ontology synonym relationships detecting synonyms is actually counter-intuitive, since I believe that the same user will not tag a URI both "computer" and "PC," but will probably only pick one of those however, groups of users will use different synonyms, and over time most of the convergence will come from synonyms being merged.

48. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1348 from folksonomy to ontology structured relationships tags that co-occur often might have a facet, or structured relationship these may be pairs or trids

49. of 49 ece 627, winter ‘1349 from folksonomy to ontology structured relationships for example "book" and "author" and "Mark Twain" is a triadic ("triple" on the Semantic Web) relationship, and if these co-occur quite often they are probably a relationship in fact, one would suspect that most co-occurences are pairs, like "author" and "Zadie Smith," or "book" and "Mark Twain," and making these work with the Semantic Web would be slightly more difficult