On 02/11/2006, at 12:48 AM, Pete Johnston wrote:

... Excellent discussion of 'social' aspect of tagging deleted for  
brevity...
> Turning to DC metadata creation, I'd probably say that while it's true
> that a good deal of DC metadata creation has been carried out by  
> people
> who are not trained cataloguers, I'm less sure that it has taken place
> within this sort of communal/collaborative context, and in that sense
> I'd probably say that DC metadata creation has typically not been a
> "social" process, or at least not in the way or to the extent that
> tagging in a system like del.icio.us is (or can be).

Just reflecting on my own experience:

** Tagging resources **

I tag things in del.icio.us [1] and Flickr [2].  I do this for a  
couple of reasons:
+	It is useful for me to group things in this way.
+	It helps other people find my stuff.
+	I can share things with colleagues and friends around the world.   
In particular, I tag things with 'Nautilus' and 'RMIT' to distinguish  
two different groups that I work with.
+	I can give things to other people. In particular, I use  
del.icio.us' "for:" tag to share things with three friends. [3]
+	They share things with me in the same way.
+	I trust that the resources I put on these sites will last longer  
than my hard disk.  A quasi back-up strategy, if you will.
+	They are accessible to me from other machines - when I'm in a  
colleague's office, for example.
+	Very, very occasionally, someone else has added a tag to one of my  
Flickr images.  I was chuffed!  :-)

In terms of 'social', I am using these systems to share with two  
types of communities - colleagues and friends.  The fact that they  
are shared with the wider world is a nice side effect, but not vital  
to me.

** Other people's tags **

+	I very rarely use del.icio.us to find resources.
+	I often use Flickr to find images, particularly images that have  
been tagged with the Creative Commons 'by attribution' copyright  
permissions. [4]
+	I use a whole bunch of resources that people have tagged - mostly  
their blog posts.
+	From conversations with people, I know that _some_ people care  
about their tagging systems, and try to build good, well structured  
systems.

** Adding metadata **
+	I add metadata to my own Web pages because it is 'best practice'.

** Other people's metadata **
+	I use metadata, mostly to find journal articles.
+	I don't use metadata to find Web pages.
+	From the evidence, I know that most people are poor at adding  
metadata to their own pages.
+	From training people to build Web pages, I know that most people  
don't understand, or care about, metadata.
+	From attending Web user group meetings, I know that metadata is  
something that is generally pushed by an organisation, rather than  
being something enthusiastically discussed and debated by Web page  
creators.

On a different note, do RDF and Topic Maps fit into this discussion  
anywhere?  Triples are a specialised sort of metadata.  But I don't  
know if you would think of them as tags.

[1] http://del.icio.us/jod999
[2] http://flickr.com/photos/jod999/
[3] http://del.icio.us/help/network
[4] http://flickr.com/creativecommons/

PS: Hi Helen, Margaret, Penny, Justina and Melissa
I have copied you into this message.  Liddy Nevile has set up a new  
mailing list about Dublin Core metadata and social tagging.  As Web  
page builders and metadata wonks, I thought that you might be  
interested.  :-)
More details at:
<http://au.dublincore.org/groups/social-tagging/index.html>
--
Jonathan O'Donnell
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://purl.nla.gov.au/net/jod
+61 4 2575 5829