folksonomies and facets

Dan KeldsenDirector, Market Intelligence at aiim.orgdan (dot) keldsen (at) aiim (dot) orgwww.linkedin.com/in/dankeldsen

FolksonomiesChaotic Mess? Controlled Vocabulary Replacement?

Temporary Blip?

Note:This presentation was first created in 2005, as an alternative point of view to training sessions I did with Delphi Group in our Proving Ground on Taxonomy and Information Architecture.

In the first 18 months or so of introducing this 30-45 minute section of our 2.5 days of content, I had many hostile or at the least, skeptical responses to this.

Even the most diehard of “traditional” librarians in the crowd however, started to turn a corner in late 2006, and this is much more commonplace from a library services standpoint.

Now, if we can only get business MANAGERS to understand why social bookmarking or tagging services might add value in their organizations... a nut that may be harder to crack.

1Wednesday, February 27, 2008

http://www.linkedin.com/in/dankeldsen



What are Folksonomies?

•Relatively recently coined term (2003+), marrying the idea of having a collected vocabulary, but personalized, and emerging from the users rather than by “experts”

•Taken to the extreme, there are some people who believe Folksonomies completely obliterate the need/desire for any controlled vocabulary efforts

➡ Extremes are for extremists. Let’s not go crazy here...





The issue is “should users have their own tagging capabilities, or should we just do

the research to determine what the official single tag should be for content?”





Best Understoodvia Examples

http://del.icio.us




http://del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us


My del.icio.us homepage






my del.icio.us - all tags exposed






All my tags as a “tag cloud” - size and color denotes frequency of use






Relatively new feature-set:Bundles (2 layer taxonomies)






Ways multiple OTHER people tag a URL (the social aspect)






Emergent Vocab gets REALLY interesting with larger numbers






And even larger numbers






Gmail - free-form tagging isn’t just for del.icio.us

•Gmail is Google’s free, web-based e-mail using AJAX, and basic precepts of:

• In-context Ads alongside your mail window (creepy privacy invasion?)

•Free-form tagging ala del.icio.us (without social sharing)

•Never delete e-mail because you’re running out of space - keep it all and search or “flip” your mail around tags





Bundles via “Tag Clouds”






Looks like webmail...






Gmail “labels”





Google, so Search is available(searching on “keyword” here)






Some labels are implied, rather than explicitly applied






Faceted NavigationVisual, and “Traditional”

The “magic” is in the facet [database] structure

Chose tags/fields/facets that mean something to your communit(y/ies)





Facetmap.com

•Very simple interfaces, a proof of concept site, but useful to prototype with no software of your own around faceted navigation

•Wine demo follows, but you can create your own, assuming you want to dive into XML or structured file creation





Interactive sliders,

manipulates the facets





Interactive sliders,manipulating facets

Have to hit the button to see the result list

Later example is “live” and dynamic





Faceted Navigation is database filtering, but many interfaces exist

COLUMNAR shown here





Drop-Down style

VARIETAL= Red Wines, White Wines, etc.

REGION = French, Italian, etc.





Facets don’t have to be “raw values” can be higher-level categories/values

Taxonomy





Selected “German” as the Region

Facets are primarily used to stack filters, without having to teach

users in advance about the lexicon





Continuing to Filter, Added “White Wines” as a Filter, just by clicking on the

facet





Demo:Iokio

CameraFinder





Demo:Iokio

Omniscope Viewerw/Van Gogh dataset





Facets are very powerful, but time-

consuming to identify, create and maintain

Make sure a recognizable cost savings or revenue/improvement metric

demonstrates that facets are worth the effort





Folksonomies and Facets

Two great tastes that... well, you get the idea.




folksonomies and facets

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