Pete

thanks for reminding us that you offered these comments.

I think what is happening now is that people are digging into the  
different motivations and trying to theorise what they are finding.  
There is some work I have been seeing about social construction of  
meaning and such linguistic/semiotic things (I think that's how they  
are characterised?) and then there are issues about what to do with  
the tags - to know if their purpose can be used to help make  
decisions about how they can be used, and even how their purpose, or  
the creator's motivations, can be ascertained usefully.

I am wondering if there are others who have something to contribute  
to this discussion???

I am also wondering if there are people thinking about the future and  
asking whop will be writing the metadata 20 years from now --- etc.

Liddy

On 03/05/2008, at 7:22 PM, Pete Johnston wrote:

> Hi Liddy,
>
> I think I still think pretty much what I wrote back here :-)
>
> http://efoundations.typepad.com/efoundations/2006/11/ 
> the_social_in_s.html
>
> Tagging may be social or "non-social". It becomes "social" when  
> it's - to some degree at least - "negotiated" (to use the term Emma  
> used in her comment) through my membership of some group and my  
> interaction with other members of that group (e.g. seeing how they  
> have tagged a resource). Whether that group is a closed group of  
> half a dozen co-workers using a service on my organisation's  
> Intranet or the open, global membership of del.icio.us isn't really  
> the point: they are both "social" contexts.
>
> I consider my contributions to del.icio.us to be mainly "for" me  
> i.e. my primary motivation is to enable me to retrieve resources in  
> the future, and the consideration of sharing resources with other  
> people is very much a secondary one - but I still recognise the  
> "social-ness" of the process.
>
> And as I also say in that post, I consider the "simplicity/ 
> complexity" axis to be distinct from the "social" one. Take  
> services like http://discogs.com/ or http://rateyourmusic.com/,  
> where members create relatively complex metadata, but there is a  
> strong "social" dimension of reviewing, correcting, extending,  
> annotating etc the metadata created by others.
>
> Pete
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: DCMI Social Tagging Community on behalf of Liddy Nevile
> Sent: Sat 5/3/2008 3:04 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: 'social' tagging
>
> Folks
>
> when we first set up this community, I had a bit of a problem with
> the word 'social' but people better than me said it was the way to go.
>
> I was not so sure because I think that tagging is perhaps when we
> have dreamt of but not dared expect - a practice that everyone can
> engage it. I think that tagging by 'ordinary' people is exactly what
> early DC work expected - I remember hearing a zillion times that we
> were after 'well-intentioned' metadata. I suspect we all got a bit
> precious and some of us even forgot that slogan. I'd like to revive  
> it!
>
> I think there is a lot of work going on in the community with people
> trying to make sense of tagging, especially wondering why people tag
> and if their reasons make a difference.
>
> I would like us to think carefully again about calling it social
> tagging - I suspect that 'social' tagging has a theoretical
> implication - that it's tagging done 'for society' or 'by society'
> and we should not be careless about these terms. Different motivation
> might mean different ways of thinking about and using the process of
> tagging.
>
> What do you think???
>
> Liddy