Patterns and Inconsistencies in Collaborative Tagging Systems : An Examination of Tagging Practices

Kipp, Margaret E. I. and Campbell, D. Grant Patterns and Inconsistencies in Collaborative Tagging Systems : An Examination of Tagging Practices., 2006 . In Annual General Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Austin, Texas (US), 3-8 November 2006. [Conference paper]

[img]
Preview
 PDF
KippCampbellASIST.pdf
Download (342kB) | Preview

English abstract

This paper analyzes the tagging patterns exhibited by users of del.icio.us, to assess how collaborative tagging supports and enhances traditional ways of classifying and indexing documents. Using frequency data and co-word analysis matrices analyzed by multi-dimensional scaling, the authors discovered that tagging practices to some extent work in ways that are continuous with conventional indexing. Small numbers of tags tend to emerge by unspoken consensus, and inconsistencies follow several predictable patterns that can easily be anticipated. However, the tags also indicated intriguing practices relating to time and task which suggest the presence of an extra dimension in classification and organization, a dimension which conventional systems are unable to facilitate.

Item type: Conference paper
Keywords: tagging, information organisation, coword analysis, tag frequency
Subjects: I. Information treatment for information services > IE. Data and metadata structures.
L. Information technology and library technology > LC. Internet, including WWW.
Depositing user: Margaret E. I. Kipp
Date deposited: 01 Jan 2007
Last modified: 02 Oct 2014 12:05
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/8720

References

Berners-Lee, T., & Fischetti, M. (2000). Weaving the Web: the original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web. New York: HarperBusiness.

Bhattacharya, S, & Basu, P.K. (1998). Mapping a research area at the micro-level using co-word analysis. Scientometrics 43(3): 359-372.

Courtial, J.P. (1994). A coword analysis of scientometrics. Scientometrics 31(3): 251-260.

Courtial, J.P., Callon, M., & Sigogneau, M. (1984). Is indexing trustworthy? Classification of articles through co-word analysis. Journal of information science 9: 47-56.

Golder, S. & Huberman, B.A. (2006). The structure of collaborative tagging systems. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (Forthcoming)

Johnson, S. (2001). Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software. New York: Scribner.

Leydesdorff, L., & Vaughan, L. (2006). Co-occurrence matrices and their applications in information science: extending ACA to the Web environment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (Forthcoming)

Meadow, C., Boyce, B.R. & Kraft D.H. (2000). Text information retrieval systems. 2nd ed. San Diego: Academic Press.

Morville, P. (2006). Ambient Findability: what we find changes who we become. Cambridge: O'Reilly.

Salton, G. & McGill, M.J. (1983). Introduction to modern information retrieval. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Shirky, C. (2005). Ontology is overrated: categories, links and tags. [Online] [http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html]

Waldrop, M. (1992). Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Weinberger, D. (2005). Taxonomies to tags: from trees to piles of leaves. Release 1.0 February 2005. [Online] [http://www.edventure.com/release1/abstracts.php?counter-4579726]

Wilson, C. (1999). Informetrics. Annual review of information science and technology 34: 107-247.

Wolfram, D. (2003). Informetrics and IR system content. Applied informetrics for information retrieval research. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.


Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item
Contact us
Send email Sponsors
Sponsor: AIMS Sponsor: D&P Sponsor: UniNa CAB Get connected
Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Linkedin LinkedIn RSS RSS