Comparing revisions for WikkaFolksonomy

Additions:
===== Wikis and Folksonomy =====
>> More on folksonomy: [[Wikipedia:Folksonomy]]>>::c::
//Tagging// (aka //Folksonomy// or //Social bookmarking//) is becoming one of the most pervasive practices in the field of [[SocialSoftware social software]]. Tags allow users to categorize content: categories emerge from single users' labelling of URLs. Tags offer also a smart (distributed) ranking system: URLs that receive more times the same tag are likely to emerge as the most relevant and authoritative sources for the topic associated to the tag (an idea similar to the PR strategy adopted by Google). Web services building categories out of users' tags include [[http://del.icio.us/ del.icio.us]] (the first service which introduced social tagging), [[http://www.technorati.com/tags/ Technorati]], [[http://www.simpy.com Simpy]], [[http://jots.com/ Jots]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr Flickr]] (tagging applied to photographs), [[http://www.citeulike.org/ CiteULike]] (tagging applied to scientific literature).
==Wikis and metadata==
CategoryDevelopment
Deletions:
===== Tags, Wiki and Folksonomy =====
>>**See also:**
~SyndicatingWikka
**External links:**
~-[[Wikipedia:Folksonomy]]
~-[[http://www.zylstra.org/extra/wikka.php?wakka=WikiTags Experiment with tags in Wikka]]
~-[[http://www.getflossed.com/wiki/doku.php?id=wikkawiki:about Implementing Folksonomy in Wikka]] (sorry, no demo available)
>>
//Tagging// (aka //Folksonomy// or //Social bookmarking//) is becoming one of the most pervasive practices in the field of [[Docs:SocialSoftware social software]]. Tags allow users to categorize content: categories emerge from single users' labelling of URLs. Tags offer also a smart (distributed) ranking system: URLs that receive more times the same tag are likely to emerge as the most relevant and authoritative sources for the topic associated to the tag (an idea similar to the PR strategy adopted by Google). Web services building categories out of users' tags include [[http://del.icio.us/ del.icio.us]] (the first service which introduced social tagging), [[http://www.technorati.com/tags/ Technorati]], [[http://www.simpy.com Simpy]], [[http://jots.com/ Jots]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr Flickr]] (tagging applied to photographs), [[http://www.citeulike.org/ CiteULike]] (tagging applied to scientific literature).
~~& In my experience the value of tagging for actually finding stuff greatly depends on how much information there is to search through and how many users are involved. It's a basic rule that the quality of social web improves with the number of people using it. And there is always a critical mass of a) information and b) users that you need before it does work in the first place. So it's not really the question whether a certain platform (wiki or blogs) can be improved by using folksonomy but if the amount of information offered by a service could be indexed more efficiently if the users do it but then you need plenty. Furthermore I think it's important that every user can provide personal tags for any item (not that one user can only tag his own content) because usually the power of the many helps eliminate false tags. As for the differences of blogs and wikis I see some similarities but I don't think they could easily be combined. I would say wikis are more meta-services because you can do a lot more than you can do with blogs when it comes to collaboration. And while blogs are likely to become the successor of the personal homepage (or they already are) I don't think there is anything that is replaced by wikis.--YodaHome
~& I got asked about tags in the wiki-part of the "patchwork portal" I created (see my [[TonZijlstra profile]] for the link), and like JavaWoman I didn't see the added value of tags in the wiki. But when I start thinking about how tags work for me in blogs and bookmarks I do see that added value. First: Tags in a page //might// coincide with the content of that page, but that needn't be. It is about the words people would use to describe the content for themselves. These might be different words than the content contains. Then tags augment the free search format. Second: I use tags not to so much to track blog content, but to track what people use what words. In delicious and Technorati there is always a link between tags and the person that used it (and which other tags it used). So that I can look at patterns like "which groupings of words are used to describe this item", "what other tags does person x that tagged this use". I increasingly use tags to scout out communities and individuals that are interested in the same type of thing I am, but use different words to describe that interest. And that is the starting point for creating a shared language with those communities and individuals. So to me the link tag-information item is not interesting in itself, but is interesting as part of the triangle of relationships of meaning "item-tag-person".
~&So if we were to integrate tags into the wiki, I'd think of letting people add tags, and keep track of who added which tag and show it in the page. Also I would not use tags as categories or vice versa. Categories are often used to //group// things by type (projects, my pages), whereas tags are used more often to describe content and often //grouping is not// the reason for tagging--TonZijlstra
~& I recently integrated tagging into Wikka for a client. I made use of Gordon Luke's ""FreeTag"" to do this which makes it quite simple. My implementation has a set of tags for each page, it does not include individual tag sets for each user, although it could with a few additions. More details about this implementation and downloads can be found at [[http://www.getflossed.com/wiki/doku.php?id=wikkawiki:about getFlossed]]. Sorry, I do not have a running demo. If anyone implements this publicly, [[http://www.getflossed.com/?q=contact let me know]] so I can post a link from my site.
~& **One more vote for tags here**...
~& While I can agree with JavaWoman's opinion on the relative uselessness of widespread tags //in general//, given the service provided by search engines, I do not second this view in the context of wikis, personal and small group information systems. But it is the very principle on debating on the "usefulness / uselessness" for everyone that I find questionable: many people finds their own way to use tags, and trying to evaluate a-priori what can be done with them and whether this is useful or not is a restricting approach IMHO. Human creativity has always defeated predictions and real usages are often unanticipated usages. The short message service (SMS) is a nice example: the designers of the GSM standard have been debating on its value and usefulness, the service was even about to be dropped from integration in the standard but there were some few spare bytes available in some payload part of the protocol so it was finally adopted, with very few hopes in its value. In the end, it became one of the most popular application of the mobile phone, despite the horrible ergonomy! Coming back to tagging and wikis, why do I find them nice ?
~&
~& - they are a **very simple and flexible way of grouping, tracking and moving information fragments**, in this case wiki page.
~& - and grouping, tracking and moving are **user-defined**.
~&
~& Wikis are very dynamic for the content of pages, but the spatial structure is much more static: as the names of pages are used for references, changing page names is rarely done, so wikis structure essentially evolves as a "growing graph", with very few nodes mobility in the graph.
~&
~& Tags offers this opportunity by introducing an **overlaid namespace** which is **flexible**. Tags can be used for ontology building, but they are **not limited to categorization** (a rather static usage): they can be used to group pages for any aspects, static or dynamic: for example, I like to use wiki for managing tasks. In this usage, assigning and //updating// "status" information (like "todo", "completed", "urgent") is very useful, as well as supporting //quick access to pages matching a given status// (like "urgent"). This is just an example of using tags which is not classical categorization.
~&
~& One may objects that this is //bad// practice, hackish way or whatever; it works very well for me, and I don't see any objective reason not to use them the way it //helps// me, and certainly not to comply some dogmatic principles ;-). We should also remember how the hypertext experts community criticized the web model when it was introduced, how messy it was considered with only one link type to support all referencing needs. The freedom, simplicity and flexibility offered by its linking model is one of the reason that let the web emerge from other hypertext systems (like gopher, which had a semantically richer linking model).
~&
~& Many people like Wikis for the same reason: simplicity and flexibility, resulting in a powerful tool with many possible usages. I think that tags well fit in this principle. In Wikka, the category system seems oriented to support the traditional ontology usage more than "tagging" (Am I wrong ?)
~&
~& Regarding JW's comment on relying on search engine to support informal tagging, I have two objections:
~& - people like to use common words for tags, and as such, explicit tagging would requires the user to use non ambiguous tag name (I mean, names that would not collide with the text appearing in content of the page), such as prefixing with Tag (TagToDo, TagCompleted).
~& - As tags can be used for assigning status and tracking, the tagging system has to ensure that listing the pages belonging to a tag is correct (like in "list all pages with tag 'Urgent'"). While database search would returns correct results, an external search engine would not be able to track tags/pages associations in a coherent manner.
~& --HackArt
~-[[http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse-en/Tagging_Extension Oddmuse: Tagging extension]]
=== Flat categories vs. taxonomies vs. faceted systems ===
~-[[http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/misc/taxonomies_and_tags.html Taxonomies and Tags: From Trees to Piles of Leaves]]
~-[[http://www.allpeers.com/blog/?p=36 Peer Pressure ยป Folksonomy Schmolksonomy]]
~-[[http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/24/tags_folksonomies_tags_flat_name_spaces.php Many-to-Many: Tags != folksonomies && Tags != Flat name spaces]]
~-[[http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html Adam Mathes - Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata]]
~-[[http://www.chrislott.org/article/960/technorati-tag-experiment Technorati Tag Experiment]]
===Wikis and metadata===
~-Using Wikka as a [[BookmarkManager tagging framework]].
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