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Chapter 3: What I could possibly cover

This week, I'm working a version 1.5 (a cleaned up first draft) of Chapter 3 "Tagging and Folksonomies". The important task for me is to work with I already have in my manuscript. Still I like to step back for a moment and write out what ideally I'd like be able to convey to my readers about tagging and folksonomies and/or functionality that I would like to have in hand for my computer systems.

  • I'd like to be to integrate the various implementations of tagging, wherever they are. For example, I use tags in Flickr, del.icio.us, and technorati. They all have somewhat different ways of expressing similar functionality — but I'd like to use these systems in as seamless way possible.
  • I like to apply tags to digital content, whether it is on my desktop computer, on one of the Web 2.0 sites, or it is on custom online collaborative spaces.
  • I like to be to apply tags at a very fine grained level. For example, not to a video clip as whole, but to a specific time segment.
  • I'd like to have better tools to visualize and query my tags, to have tools that assist me in tagging new materials based on what and how I've already tagged materials. I like to offerred suggested tags based on some mix of what has already been typed in,what my social networks uses, global usage patterns, and other things that I've tag already.
  • Tools for name reconciliation and reduction of tags. I might have had inconsistent use of singular and plural tags and want to have tools that will help me clean up those inconsistencies
  • Right now I have a mess of tags in delicious. I'd like some tool to help me clean them up. (Does del.icio.us direc.tor fit the bill?)
  • I'd like to have better reconciliation between controlled vocabulary systems (e.g., LCSH) and folksonomies.

The observations I've written are abstract. I should think in terms of concrete systems. Systems I tag a lot in:

  • Flickr
  • delicious
  • Amazon.com
  • Librarything.com
  • I do make categories on my WordPress blogs which seem to turn into technorati tags.

It would be useful to have a big list of systems that support tagging. I believe such a list exists already on the Wikipedia. Probably on the list are a lot of the social book marking sites, photo sharing sites other than Flickr, video sites like YouTube.

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