Comments on: Tag Sorting: Another tool in an information architect’s toolbox

By: rickjdavies

rickjdavies — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:53:55 +0000

You can represent the data collected via card sorting and from tagging samples as a network, using social network analysis.
Here is a network version of the tagging lists above
http://www.scribd.com/word/download_preview/3788937?secret_password=1khtgskmk3sywcad089j
regards, rick davies

By: rashmi

rashmi — Fri, 06 May 2005 21:18:22 +0000

Avi,

Thanks for your kind words about this blog.

What you are suggesting – giving people objects, documents and asking them what tags it makes them think of, is pretty similar to the freelisting method. You can read more here: http://www.uzanto.com/research/archives/2003_02/freelisting.html

Its interesting that you mention this – one of my realizations is that tagging and many of the research methods used in information architecture share a lot of similarity and are complementary. Tagging does on a large scale what many of us already do for our projects on a small scale using free-listing.

By: rashmi

rashmi — Fri, 06 May 2005 21:09:03 +0000

Lars, the minimum definitely serves as a filter. But I think something deeper is also happening here highlighting the difference between Flickr and Del.icio.us.

On Flickr, people tag objects and scenes from their OWN life - as such it reflects the idiosyncracy and subjectivity of individuals. On the other hand, articles tagged on del.icio.us are mostly links to articles or professional material.

I think we will see a greater variety of tags when people tag personal stuff, as opposed to mostly professional stuff.

By: Lars Pind

Lars Pind — Fri, 06 May 2005 03:54:06 +0000

On the lack of surprise ... could this be due to the definition of related tags employed by delicious? Most likely something's only related if there are a certain minimum number of links tagged with both tags, so there that minimum serves as a filter against your surprises?

By: avi

avi — Thu, 05 May 2005 16:12:54 +0000

What a nice parallel and a great way to get at people's intuitive categorizing.
One issue: Tags on del.icio.us are only as representative as the site's visitors. Hence your finding: lots of computer-ese, no red no fruit.. As you say, this sort of service is not mainstream - so it's tags won't be either Conclusions as to mental models have to be related to specific groups.
One idea: And this is probably something you are already all over - could you provide people (who you sample) with content they are familiar with (a document, an image) and ask what "tags" or descriptors they'd apply? A sort of prompted free-listing/tagging.
One follow up: see 43things.com, which has a broader focus than del.icio.us, but appears to me to draw from a wider population.
I like your blog.

By: oso

oso — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 19:32:53 +0000

Hi Rashmi, we met at Berkman Center last November or December and today I arrived here via a link of a link of a del.icio.us bookmark I clicked on. Some smart stuff here. I really like the diagram. My thoughts on tags and folksonomies have been exhausted, but they will definitely present both a challenge and resource to information architects and marketing agencies.