Comments on: Folksonomy Notes: Considering the Downsides, Behavioral Trends, and Adaptation

By: Bob

Bob — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

One more downside no one seems concerned about is the way it encourages expression of the lowest common denominator. We’ve now got people trying to sum up their entire beautifully-written essays in a few pithy words.

Let Google worry about that; write like a person, not a machine. Your words certainly have value beyond the few tags you think of after writing them.

By: Jay Fienberg

Jay Fienberg — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Another way to look at the information architecture role is as architect of an individual or community’s needs to structure information.

The architecting of controlled vocabularies is usually in the context of a larger design. And, many controlled vocabularies are created specifically to allow different people to use their own structures, i.e., the controlled structure is simply a map created between different (possibly, individual’s) schemes.

In my own experience, a lot of controlled vocabularies come out of a community of people who want to reconcile a lot of terms that maybe should be the same, but aren’t. So, they get an info architect to come up with a design that accounts for these things.

Usually, the resulting architecture doesn’t actually make the terms the same, but helps people make the connection between them that people already are trying to make.

All that said, this doesn’t mean that folks shouldn’t be able to make these connections themselves, without an IA–many IAs are very interested in helping people do more of their own info organizing in the way they want.

But, often the way this works (as is the case with del.icio.us and Flickr) is that there is one level of significantly centralized control that allows for another level of significantly decentralized freedom. And, in general, ideally, this is the kind of trade-off that’s figured out as part of a larger design.

By: Chris L

Chris L — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah, I wish you hadn’t used those ugly tags, they just *ruin* the aesthetic appeal of your well-written essay.

Oh, wait, it was because of this tag that I found your essay at all. Oops

By: Josh

Josh — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Though I don’t completely understand Bob’s argument, I think what he and Chris are talking about is important.

This is how I’m using del.icio.us: I’m using it to hold references to what I read and to what I write. If I tag them well enough (which isn’t hard) I suddenly get to see what others are reading and writing about the same topic. This is why I’m so excited about this paradigm.

In no way do I see it as serving up lowest-common-denominated content. On the contrary, it is serving up the most recent or relevant content. We may be using simple tags to get to this place, but that’s external metadata, not the essay that I’ve published. I guess I don’t see how this encourages me to write like a machine. I hope I’m not doing that…

I don’t want to dismiss Bob’s argument. I would love to hear it in more depth. Care to elaborate, Bob?