Readings (8)

Folksonomies and the Revolution

The article by Ellyssa Kroski’s opening sentence (“there is a revolution happening on the Internet that is alive and building momentum with each passing tag”) threw me a little. The article itself was much more straightforward than I was expecting. Her point that folksonomies provide insight into user behaviour seems directed at libraries and librarians. I dislike the way that librarians seem on the outside of these discussions (except when we’re described as disdainful or losing our power.) Libraries—especially public and special libraries—do make huge improvisations to the traditional classification schemes based on user needs. (And yes, we can be rigid, but, you know, rigid in a wonderful way.)

The wikipedia article threw out a lot of terms (“workplace democracy”) but seemed fairly optimistic about folksonomies and tagging. The Lawley article referred to the minority view, namely, the “darker side of bottom-up classification”: the lack of precision, recall and authority.

The Quintarelli article also talks about the revolution: “new revolutionary ability”. I disagree with the point that traditional classification schemes require “expert users”. In an ideal scenario, the users don’t have to be experts. If they do, we’re letting them down. The downside of this is that it turns librarians into mediators of a sort, standing outside of the action and solely concerned with imposing order.

I suppose the big post-revolutionary question for all of us expert users is: do we find it easier to navigate the new folksonomies or the traditional schemes? And if we find the new ways better, how can we incorporate what folksonomies teach us about user behaviours into the schemes we already have?

Finally, I don’t think I am ever going to be someone who is ever going to comfortable with throwing one’s lot in with “the wisdom of crowds”, which Kroski seems to see as the thrust behind the revolution. I can see her point that tagging can “engender community”, but I think it would have to be a relatively small and committed community. There are accurate charges against the traditional classification schemes for being dated, politically incorrect, elite and exclusive, but trusting “the crowd” (known for being politically incorrect and often violent toward minority groups) hardly seems like a solution. (Carol Ou picks up on this too.)

Have a fun Reading Week everyone. And look Ma: no use of the word “interesting” this week!