Revision [7190]
This is an old revision of WikkaFolksonomy made by NilsLindenberg on 2005-04-11 10:48:28.
Wikis and Folksonomy
More on folksonomy: Wikipedia:Folksonomy
- Following JW's suggestion, I'm renaming the page so as to avoid confusions between tagging and wiki markup. I decided to maintain the word folksonomy in the title, though, since what I intend to discuss here is the specific issue of integrating wikis and folksonomy services, not the more general problem of Wiki metadata (I agree that a WikkaMetadata page might become an interesting hub, though, with links to this page, to WikiPing and to other metadata-related discussions) -- DarTar
What is tagging
I'd like to share with you some thoughts on the possibility of integrating a tagging system into WikkaWiki.Tagging is a simple way of labelling nodes and building a basic category system.
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 del.icio.us (the first service which introduced social tagging), Technorati, Simpy, Jots, Flickr (tagging applied to photographs), CiteULike (tagging applied to scientific literature).
An example of folksonomy web-service
Look at this example of technorati's page for the tag: wiki or just choose one of these tags.
Why tagging
The interest of tagging is twofold.
- On the one hand, tags can be used internally as an alternative to categories: they help organize content by topic in a simple and intuitive way.
- On the other hand, tags can be used to post labelled content to external web services.
The second aspect deserves some attention. It is quite common for bloggers to tag their posts, so that web services like technorati can categorize them by topic. It might be interesting to add such a feature to wikis as well.
Tagging: From Blogs to Wikis
Addressing JavaWoman's concern (see below), why should a Wiki need a tagging system, I see two main reasons:
First, Wikis -- at least those dedicated to the general public -- are often structured as collections of nodes dealing with single topics; the Wikipedia is probably the most known example. A WikiPage is often a thematic page that is linked from a hub or category page. Given this one-topic/one-page nature of most Wikis it seems natural to consider tagging as an interesting way of describing wiki content. Internally, hubs can be built automatically by grouping pages that use the same tag. But, most important, tagged pages can be published on external web services (see below). JavaWoman argues that such services are tailored to blogs, not to wikis. Only partially true: blikis - see below - can already be used to broadcast content to such web services. Moreover, the fact that wiki-centered services to aggregate content (like recentchanges) are not common is not a good argument not to invent them :)
Second, Wiki engines can actually be used to power Blogs and the two technologies are likely to merge in the future. Here's a nice quote on the hybrid nature of Wikis with respect to blogs:
The more I think about it, the clearer it is to me that Blogs and Wikis are really instances of the same meta-level idea. They should be unified into a single system. Blogs organize information temporally along a single thread. Wikis organize information spatially around a set of nodes representing ideas. Blogs have no concept of space. Wikis have no concept of time. What we really need is a single framework that enables information to be organized freely in space and time. You can create Nodes that represent ideas and link them to one another just like you do in a Wiki. You can post articles to any Node (or set of Nodes), just like you do in a Blog and they appear sequentially by time. When writing any article you can enter Wiki commands to quickly link to, or create new, Nodes. This is the best of both worlds. You can then filter it by Node name, Time, or both. (From: Integrating Blogs and Wikis -- A Higher Unifying Framework)
There are already many wiki engines that offer blog functionality (Blikis), thus combining the advantages of the two kinds of tool.
A nice example is Rui Carmo's The Tao of Mac, a seamless integration of a wiki engine with blog functionality.
More information about Blikis is available on Wikipedia.
How to broadcast tagged content
Publishing tags requires just a simple modification of the RSS generation script, to add the following lines:
<category>[tagname]</category>
<dc:subject>[tagname]</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>[tagname]</dc:subject>
Another way to tag pages consists in adding a rel="tag" attribute to a link. For instance:
<a href="http://apple.com/ipod" rel="tag">iPod</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity" rel="tag">Gravity</a>
<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/tags/chihuahua" rel="tag">Chihuahua</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity" rel="tag">Gravity</a>
<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/tags/chihuahua" rel="tag">Chihuahua</a>
Once links or RSS contain tag information, you can easily publish them by pinging (automatically or manually) web services like technorati. The tagged URL will then show up in the corresponding tag page.
- These examples seem to come from a Technorati page; this page specifically explains how to publish "tags" to Technorati. It also explains that Technorati is a service for blogs really, and where it gets its content from (publishing "tags" about your own content is just one way). More importantly, the RSS example is specifically for RSS/ATOM (one of the several RSS standards) - you cannot just add such tags to any RSS file: if the RSS standard you're using doesn't support the <category> and/or <dc:subject> tags you'll end up with an invalid RSS feed that will just not load any longer in many feed readers. I'm not sure what pinging other services than Technorati would do - are there others that actually support these (RSS/ATOM) tags or the rel="tag" attibute in links? --JavaWoman
- Hey, you're raising three different issues: 1) is the tagging system useful only for blogs (my opinion is thy aren't: see my comments above); 2) is the data format producing invalid RSS; 3) is the data format useful only for technorati or also for other web services. Concerning the two last issues, as you know, I'm definitely against adopting a data format in Wikka that goes against web standards or adopting a feature that results in invalid RSS. Given the success of such tagging systems it seems at least very implausible that they haven't considered this issue. Moreover most blog services offer the possibility to ping technorati, del.icio.us as well as many other folksonomy services: I would be very surprised to see different standards (or invalid standards) used to broadcast information from each of these blog services to each of these folksonomy services. -- DarTar
Integrating tags in a wiki
Forthcoming...
- I'm still puzzled about the purpose of this. What do you gain that you don't already have by having a search engine indexing your wiki?
BTW, of the examples of "tagging" services mentioned above, Technorati seems to be the only one that actually supports categorizing your own content; the others are more "collaborative" efforts (people categorizing others' content) - although it's nor even reallly collaboration but rather a compilation of personal categorizations of bookmarks. I'm very doubtful about the value of these efforts though, especially since there are no agreed-upon vocabularies. There are already established standards for adding meta data to content though, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Dublin Core (RDF also supports describing your own as well as other's content). The W3C's effort for the www.w3.org/2001/sw/ Semantic Web Activity is based on such standards, as are various related activities. --JavaWoman
- Digging a little further I stumbled over this page which nicely describes my misgivings about the totally informal assigning of keywords on "tagging" services and merging "tagging" from different people made for different purposes. What amazes me is that this is a (blog) post from just a month ago and the comments read as if the discovery of these kinds of problems is something new. In fact this is very old news - it seems the people discussing "folksonomy" (or "fauxonomy" which I consider more descriptive :)) have never even heard of RDF or ontologies or all the work that's already been done in this area for years, and are discovering it all over again. Sigh.
Actually, maybe that's the problem. Maybe the metadata/RDF/ontology community hasn't been doing enough 'outreach' promotion of their work and ideas. I really 'discovered' RDF a little over 4 years ago (though I was aware of it before) but I didn't need any outreach for that: I just happened to be right on the spot at a conference where yet another application of RDF was being discussed and I was interested in the application. There are actually many applications of RDF already (and of DC, which also can be used as a part of RDF); one example is the RSS 1.0 standard. It's all about meta data - and long before there was DC, or RDF, or even the web there was meta data and there were ontologies and methods for creating them. It makes me a little sad to see a whole web community seems to be in the process of discovering it all over again, without taking advantage of all the work that's been done before. A lot sad, actually. --JavaWoman
- JavaWoman, as a senior editor for the Open Directory Project, I think I'm quite familiar with ontologies :) I see two different issues here at stake: the first one is about the type of content organization offered by traditional ontologies vs. folksonomies; the second is the standards issue.
I think it is important to keep these issues separated. The first issue addresses your question: What do you gain that you don't already have by having a search engine indexing your wiki?. As you know, there is a huge difference (a cognitive one ;)) between search engines and ontologies. This is not really the point. The real question is the kind of content classification that can be offered by emerging ontologies as opposed to traditional ontologies. There is an evident difference between human-edited taxonomies (like the ODP) that are facing major scalability problems (basically not enough editors to deal with the increasing number of submissions) and self-organizing, sloppy, practical, de-facto ontologies. Folksonomy are not going to replace human-edited directories in the short run, but they are likely to become (as soon as they improve their technology) their most important competitor in the long run (see for instance: Beyond the Folksonomy vs. Ontology Distinction. The second issue concerns the standard used to describe metadata. The tagging system implemented by folksonomy services is ridiculous compared to what full-fledged RDF can do, but maybe this is the reason of its success. Most folksonomy systems have adopted a simple format (a very limited subset of page metadata) that allows a sort of quick-and-dirty labelling of an URL: it certainly lacks the descriptiveness and rigueur prescribed by ontologists for metadata standards, but it practically works. A quote on this topic found at Many-to-many:
This is something the "well-designed metadata" crowd has never understood — just because it's better to have well-designed metadata along one axis does not mean that it is better along all axes, and the axis of cost, in particular, will trump any other advantage as it grows larger. And the cost of tagging large systems rigorously is crippling, so fantasies of using controlled metadata in environments like Flickr are really fantasies of users suddenly deciding to become disciples of information architecture.
- In conclusion, to me the question is to understand whether basic metadata description for wiki pages can be done using (valid) standards that are compatible with folksonomy services and whether we think such funcitonality is interesting for wiki users or not. -- DarTar
- My two cents: I think it is a good idea. Some things which are standard in the blogging community could be usefull for wikis, too (how about trackback for example?). But i don't see tags as a replacement to categories. I rather see it the other way round: use categories to create the tags (automatically). The problems I see: a)wikka isn't able to ping (or is wikiping compatible?) b)as jw said, what should be pinged c)there should be an option to turn it off. Dartar, perhaps you should write technorati an email? They encourage developers to do so and ask questions about how it works. Or see http://www.technorati.com/developers/ --NilsLindenberg
More on the Folksonomy-Wiki connection
Enable a Wiki Folksonomy Emergence
Year of the Wiki Enterprise: A wedding between wikis and folksonomy
CategoryDevelopment