An examination of authority in social classification systems Export

@inproceedings{Feinberg06, abstract = {From introduction: Champions of social classification praise its flexible and collaborative nature, in contrast to the rigidity and authoritarianism that they see in traditional classificative structures (such as Kroski, 2005; Shirky, 2005c; Merholz, 2004). In the view of these writers, social classification applications such as the photo storage Web site Flickr and the Web bookmarks manager del.icio.us are both democratic, incorporating the participation of all Web users, and emergent, changing rapidly in response to new content. On the other hand, traditional methods for organizing information, particularly those that involve hierarchy, are seen as exclusive, because they may not represent all users' viewpoints, and imprecise, because they cannot be easily adapted for the rapid pace of content development engendered by Web publishing. Two claims appear to underlie these descriptions of social classification. One, that the goal of classification is to identify and locate items based on a personal sense of appropriate categorization, and two, that, if enough other users index (or tag) items according to their own personal ideas of appropriate categorization, then all possibilities will be represented, and both searching and browsing will be facilitated. This paper will evaluate these claims, particularly in regards to the role and nature of authority in organizational schemes, and the intersection of authority with an organizational scheme's purpose. I consider these issues for three services often associated with social classification systems: • Indexing of personal collections. • Sharing of indexed personal collections. • Merging of personal collections into a group-indexed aggregate collection}, author = {Feinberg, Melanie}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 17th SIG Classification Research Workshop}, citeulike-article-id = {1538256}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/sigcr/sigcr-06feinberg.pdf}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1783/}, keywords = {authority, collaborative\_tagging, indexing, social-classification}, posted-at = {2007-08-06 15:43:32}, priority = {0}, title = {An examination of authority in social classification systems}, url = {http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/sigcr/sigcr-06feinberg.pdf}, year = {2006} }

TY - CONF ID - Feinberg06 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1538256 N2 - From introduction: Champions of social classification praise its flexible and collaborative nature, in contrast to the rigidity and authoritarianism that they see in traditional classificative structures (such as Kroski, 2005; Shirky, 2005c; Merholz, 2004). In the view of these writers, social classification applications such as the photo storage Web site Flickr and the Web bookmarks manager del.icio.us are both democratic, incorporating the participation of all Web users, and emergent, changing rapidly in response to new content. On the other hand, traditional methods for organizing information, particularly those that involve hierarchy, are seen as exclusive, because they may not represent all users’ viewpoints, and imprecise, because they cannot be easily adapted for the rapid pace of content development engendered by Web publishing. Two claims appear to underlie these descriptions of social classification. One, that the goal of classification is to identify and locate items based on a personal sense of appropriate categorization, and two, that, if enough other users index (or tag) items according to their own personal ideas of appropriate categorization, then all possibilities will be represented, and both searching and browsing will be facilitated. This paper will evaluate these claims, particularly in regards to the role and nature of authority in organizational schemes, and the intersection of authority with an organizational scheme’s purpose. I consider these issues for three services often associated with social classification systems: • Indexing of personal collections. • Sharing of indexed personal collections. • Merging of personal collections into a group-indexed aggregate collection TI - An examination of authority in social classification systems T2 - Proceedings of the 17th SIG Classification Research Workshop KW - authority KW - collaborative_tagging KW - indexing KW - social-classification AU - Feinberg, Melanie PY - 2006/// UR - http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/sigcr/sigcr-06feinberg.pdf ER -