theresa regli bw-3
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Folksonomies | Power to the People
April 26, 2006
Theresa RegliDirector, Content Management
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Simple Truth | People see the world differently
SAND TRAP BUNKER
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Simple Truth | Words evoke multiple meanings
BREAKFAST
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Taxonomy• Law for categorizing information
Meta Data and/or Content Attributes• Information about content: "data about the data Synonym Ring:
A set of words/phrases that can be used interchangeably for searching. (Hypertension, high blood pressure)
Thesaurus• A tool that controls synonyms and identifies the relationships
among terms
Controlled Vocabulary• A list of preferred and variant terms, with relationships
(hierarchical and associative) defined
Accounting for differences for this in the CM world
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Sample Taxonomy | Dewey Decimal
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A) General WorksB) Philosophy, Psychology, ReligionC) History: Auxiliary SciencesD) History: General and Old WorldE) History: United StatesF) History: Western HemisphereG) Geography, Anthropology, RecreationH) Social ScienceJ) Political ScienceK) Law
L) EducationM) MusicN) Fine ArtsP) Literature & LanguagesQ) ScienceR) MedicineS) AgricultureT) TechnologyU) Military ScienceV) Naval ScienceZ) Bibliography & Library Science
While both taxonomies are used in libraries,note how the differences in classification are specifically accommodating:
• Audience• Subject matter
Sample Taxonomy | Library of Congress
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• Faceted taxonomies allow users to narrow down and select based on very granular attributes
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Why Tag? R3 | Right Content, Right User, Right Time™
Pro
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Financial Advisor
Institutional Consultant
Financial Analyst
Retirement Plan Sponsor / TPA
Institutional & Retail Investor
Attract
Engage
Convert
Support
Renew
© 2006 Molecular
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• Taxonomies are top-down, dictatorial, “expertly”-determined classification schemes with variable flexibility
• Though invaluable in the CMS realm, taxonomies are rarely exhaustive or encompassing of many individuals’ perspectives on content
• Folksonomies give “Power to the People” to tag and retrieve content to their liking, and share that approach/perspective with others
• But with such freedom come many drawbacks• Folksonomies are more anarchistic than democratic
Taxonomy Backlash
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• Folksonomy: the anti-controlled vocabulary. Collaborative, user-driven vocabularies for tagging content, rarely with any sort of control
• Portmanteau of the words “folks” and “taxonomy”• Method of labeling and organizing data by collaborative
tagging• Arise in Web-based communities where technology
exists that allow users to create and use tags• Generally applied to the labeling and sharing of user-
generated or collaboratively-created existing content, such as blogs
• Relevance between meta data and content may be determined by users in a democratic fashion• four users define an object as being ‘green' • one user defines an object as being ‘aqua' • relevance can be defined as "more green than aqua”• derived by the user-defined meta tags
Folksonomy Basics
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Folksonomy Example | Flickr
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Folksonomy Example | Flickr
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Hey, you, get off of my cloud…
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• Social networking software: applications that connect friends, business partners, or other individuals together using a variety of tools• MySpace, LinkedIn • Folksonomies facilitate social networking
• One of many technologies that allow users to “take over” and be the master of their domains• Wikis, RSS, blogs, faceted browsing
• Collabularies: yet another portmanteau combining “collaborative” and “vocabulary” (sounds like another word for “language” to me!)
Folksonomy roots and related trends
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Folksonomy Disadvantages
Meta noise: inaccurate or irrelevant meta data
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• Meta noise is prevalent in systems not based on a controlled vocabulary, such as meta data defined by users in a folksonomy
• Examples:• Case insensitive (chinese vs. Chinese)• Incorrectly spelled tags (blu instead of blue) • Singular vs. plural (cat vs. cats)• Lack of hierarchy (cheese & Roquefort tag at the same
level)• Tags which are loosely unrelated (frog on a content
object featuring only a lilly pad)
Folksonomy Disadvantages
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• On systems open to large user groups, esoteric tags which are understood by a only minority of users tend to proliferate• burdens users• decreases system efficiency
• Core to folksonomies are the flaws that formal classification systems are designed to eliminate, such as redundancy, misspelling, etc.
• Taxonomists/ontologists (this one included) argue that an agreed-to set of tags enables more efficient indexing and searching of content
Folksonomy Disadvantages
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Simple Truths
• The universe has a natural tendency towards chaos• Human beings naturally seek to make order out of that
chaos• Chaos theory purports that there is order to be found in
every chaotic “pattern”
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Making order of chaos
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Making order of chaos
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Making order of chaos?
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• Often, users can discover & befriend folksonomy tag creators• Lower content categorization costs
• No hierarchically organized nomenclature to learn• Users simply create and apply tags on the fly
• Inherently open-ended (some consider this a disadvantage)• Can respond quickly to changes and whims of users• Like open source software, wikis and blogs, this creates an
environment of adaptability and innovation • Tags are generated by people who have spent more time interacting
with the content than taxonomists or ontologists have • Highly personalized
• Users can tag with whatever they want, when they want• Encouraging
• Users immediately see the results of their influence on the system• Minority views/opinions/perspectives don’t get squashed out
It’s not all bad | Folksonomy Advantages
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• Folksonomy may be one of the keys to developing a truly Semantic Web, where every online object contains machine-readable meta data that describes its content
• Not only would search engine precision improve, but a more relevant web of related information could be enabled
• The challenge is the governing structure that would keep tags consistent, and the willingness of people to tag things
Key to the Semantic Web?
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• Consider a moderated / edited folksonomy, supported by a taxonomy framework• Create clusters and hierarchies based on user tags• Eliminate / merge redundant tags• Flickr is a great example
• Give users tagging guidelines• User research and analysis should be the foundation of
any taxonomy design process• This will minimize the need for folksonomy
• Folksonomy functionality is great for blogs – allowing users to tag their entries on the fly based on any new topic they wish
The best of both worlds
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R3 | Right Content, Right User, Right Time™
Pro
duct
sFo
rms
& A
pps
Pric
es &
Rat
es
Abo
ut U
sE
duca
tion
& P
lann
ing
Financial Advisor
Institutional Consultant
Financial Analyst
Retirement Plan Sponsor / TPA
Institutional & Retail Investor
Attract
Engage
Convert
Support
Renew
© 2006 Molecular
Copyright © 2006 Molecular, Inc. | www.molecular.com 26
Discussion / Q&A
Thank you!Feel free to e-mail me:
or visit
www.molecular.com