[Update: The host of the tagging session, Phillip Jeffrey commented below, allowing me to update the text with the correct name of the presenter. He also mentions other notables taking part in the conversation during the session. Thanks Phillip!]

Note: This post was written in a very stream-of-consciousness manner during the Tagging session at Northern Voice this afternoon, however I was unable to get back onto the wifi to post it.

–

Right now the session focused on tagging is going on. The presenter, Phillip Jeffrey,  is doing his master’s thesis at UBC on the tagging phenomenon.

After the prepared presentation, the first question was about tagging style, i.e. how to approach tagging. The pertinent point is that tagging has been implemented in different ways at different sites, so that for example on del.icio.us, you are forced to use single words. The hack is to use an underscore - apparently Technorati understands this as multiple words.

In the previous citizen journalism session, the topic of tags came up briefly, and the overwhelming majority would prefer to use comma delimited tags which would allow for multiple word tags.

Next question: What about malicious tagging? (malicious is such a great word - it’d be fun to have a site called mal.icio.us, but since Yahoo! now controls the icio.us top-level domain, we’re unlikely ever to see that…) This is also known as “tag bombing”. It looks as though most tag-enabled systems (del.icio.us, Technorati, flickr) have some form of system to reduce or eliminate malicious tagging.

A further discussion (wish I could get the names straight) about the fundamental differences between tagging and categorization. The description given was perfect; essentially, when you’re looking at categorization, you have to consider the entire world, then decide where what you’re working on fits in that world and categorize it accordingly, usually before you start writing. In tagging, you simply create something, then associate some words to it after the fact, which is a much lower cognitive load - uses less “brain cycles”.

Tags: , , , , , , ,