It Depends.

I’ve always liked either/or questions.  My sister and I, whenever we had to ride in the car for days (the mainland never seems quite so big as when you’re driving, in our case, from Michigan to Arizona), would play Death Is Not An Option, only our situations were always pleasant.  The older we got, the more the conversation changed.  Classic example: Tom Cruise vs. Brad Pitt.  There would be actual debate (Cruise looses points for aliens, Pitt for Meet Joe Black), clarification (were we drinking tea or performing espionage?), and then the eventual conclusion.  But, like I said, we got older and the rules changed.  For one, I don’t even like tea.  Anyway, the answer, is, of course, Johnny Depp.  If you were wondering.

So we come to the question of social tagging vs. professional cataloging and classification.  (in this instance, I feel Pitt is social tagging)  Thing is, they both have very strong points and very serious drawbacks.  So we change the rules a little, we combine the two.

There are several key differences between the systems:

• Rules for social tagging are much looser than for subject headings.  You can add as many tags as you want, but subject headings are more specific.  This is a plus for social tagging because you stand a better chance of finding the resource if there are multiple entry points.  However, this kind of thinking often leads one in circles, and it is part of what subject headings can help avoid.  With tagging, there are no ‘broader terms,’ or ‘narrower terms,’ just more options in general.   The long-term effect of repeated social tagging for specific resources would be that the useful tags would float to the top, and the pointless ones would die off–Darwinism.  Subject headings don’t have that luxury.  People living in Hawaii are going to be classed as aliens until someone in charge realizes it’s part of the United States and changes the book.
• The tag is determined by the user. This allows for greater flexibility in regards to the diversity of users.  Dewy Decimal classification, for example, is ridiculously skewed toward white Americans.  If you’re, for example, not a white dude from Minnesota, it’s probably more difficult to follow the chain of thought that puts Hawaiians and Martians in the same category. (admittedly, I’m a white chick from Michigan, and I still find the logic awfully fuzzy.)  So a huge bonus that makes social tagging so accessible is that you can use slang or local terminology (seriously, all examples of Brit Speak as compared to the American Bastardization Of are completely fleeing my brain, but you know what I’m talking about.) to look up your materials.  Subject Headings do help, though, to make sure there are specific places to look for specific materials.  I do find it interesting that at some point, there become accepted slang terms for social bookmarking, the collective edits itself.  The adaptability of the structure is helpful, but would be aided significantly if paired with a stricter framework.
• Tags can be easier to remember.  searching for ‘purple people eaters’ is easier than remembering you have to look for ‘magical creatures, care of’ and then continue on, because you just look up exactly what you need. (and oh my god, has there ever been a more disturbing mental image to drive home the importance of grammar: are the people being eaten purple,  or are the people eaters themselves purple?  never thought about it until I just typed it. ick.)  Being able to remember what you’re looking for when going back is fairly crucial on large projects.  However, again the structure of subject headings proves its worth by making the exact same path to a source available to all users.  It is frequently not just one person who wants to know about local recipes.  Using subject headings, you’d look through Cooking to find a recipe for Loco Moco.  In my tag list it would be under Culinary Experiments Gone Seriously Awry.  In Jenna’s it’d be under Gastrointestinal Bliss.  You can see how I’d miss that if I were only using her tags.  So while I might have a fondness for my easily remembered tag, it would prove useless to a different user.  And while we do want to allow access to resources to be personalized, only using social tags would be far too personal.

There really are a great many benefits to each system, but I think the best option is the third: combine the two.  Live Journal, for example,  now allows you to tag your blog entries, however you want.  But the most useful tags, the ones used in moderated communities where more than one person uses them, are the ones selected from a list.  I think if there were an easy way of users choosing tags, instead of just inventing them, social tagging could really revolutionize catalogs.  As it stands, subject headings rely completly on the assessment done by only a few individuals.  If users as well as catalogers were allowed access to tagging utilities, the results could be remarkable.

Trust is not a four letter word

First of all: Threaded Comments For The Win!  All I’ve got to do is figure out how to turn it on.

Anyway, to the assignment.

I found the bridging vs. bonding concept to be the most intriguing as well as providing an interesting framework for levels of trust, and settled in to find communities that exhibited both kinds of interaction.  I decided to join Listal and del.icio.us.  Listal is a community where you list and rank everything you’ve read, listened to, watched, or played, and can connect with people with similar interests.  At first I assumed this would be a blatant bridging type of community.  However, closer inspection of the forums frequented by the users illustrated that frequently, deeper friendships were forged through the use of the community.  For example, one young man started a thread about writing, inviting others to share what they’d written themselves.  As the discussion progressed, first between only the OP and the first respondent, their language became more relaxed, they joked around and encouraged each other with their writing.  And then the conversation that started with the Question Person and the Answer Person started to bring in other people as well, filling out the conversation a bit more.

an exchange on the Writing board at Listal

Although it’s a limited example, this type of back and forth support and encouragement is the kind of behavior I associate with bonding rather than bridging.

del.icio.us, on the other hand, really is a bridging SNS.  It’s social bookmarking, sharing links to interesting things with other people.  I hoped to find some good typography sites, and was inundated with loads of links from various users.

a fraction of the sites tagged as 'typography'

I came to recognize my taste ran parallel to some particular users, and discovered they had other interesting links as well. For example, I followed a user who had bookmarked I Love Typography, clicked on the ‘inspiration’ tag, and found a link to a really interesting architect’s site.

it's industrial and modern! what's not to love? ok, don't answer that, just appreciate that I appreciate it.

For me, that’s the kind of interaction that indicates bridging behavior.

I like the system of trust built into del.icio.us better than that of Listal because, quite frankly, it’s easier to ignore a link to something you don’t agree with or find interesting than it is to ignore an entire review you don’t agree with.  The simple fact that there is more commentary in Listal makes the trust perhaps more broad, but also more difficult to earn.  Also, due to the nature of listing everything you’ve consumed, there is much more inherent negativity in Listal compared to the all-recommendations nature of del.icio.us.

The complicated part of this session’s work was the final project aspect.  The way I view social networking sites has been very definitely altered, in a good way, for sure, but it makes me want to pause and re-evaluate some things I thought I had a handle on.  It’s not a particular secret that I enjoy television shows, and I think I’d like to focus my research on online communities that form around them.  Specifically, what kinds of connections do people make within the communities? are they weak or strong ties?  Do they extend beyond the original purpose of the community, that is, to share information about a tv show?

I’m particularly interested in how the new groups form and create social roles within themselves over time.  How do the social norms form within new communities?  Gleave’s paper was particularly interesting to me.  I’d like to follow the formation of a new online community and work out how the social roles get filled.  The mid-season replacement shows just started, so there should be some new communities cropping up.  Dollhouse, for example, just started airing a couple weeks ago, and Joss Whedon fans aren’t really known for their silence, so that may be a good place to look.  Gleave did an excellent job deconstructing Wikipedia, but content for fan communities is generated in different ways, and I’d like to look into that more.  If new communities are to succeed, how do maintainers generate enough initial content to keep the comm going?  Does the bulk of the content fall to one person, or does the responsibility eventually get split up? How does that happen?

I’m eager to read other people’s thoughts on their projects and look forward to refining my own, so questions and comments are definately appreciated.