On 6/12/05, Pietro Speroni di Fenizio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Few days ago I wrote an entry (see below) on how I > thought delicious should let users tag url with an > approximation of a tag cloud instead than with a tag > set. This by considering as relevant the order of the > tags.
Pietro: I read your proposal with great interest, but I don't think the idea of tagging with an approximated power set/cloud really matches the expectation of how people actually tag. I know its not how I tag, if it matters. Essentially, the difficulty is the issue of "order" in terms of my conception. If I tag a post as "fiction, prose, science," I'm not trying to say that the fact its prose fiction is more important than the fact it's about science. On the contrary, I CAN'T say, because that meaning is ultimately in the mind of the community as a whole, not in my perception. By assuming my tag set is really a cloud, you're injecting meaning where there really isn't any. Further, if Del started assuming tags are input as clouds rather than sets, it would actually limit my expressibility. I can't say, in such a context, that an entity is equally two or more (or potentially a lot more) things; there's an implicit hierarchy. I thought we were trying to get away from preconceived hierarchies? >From my perspective, the tag cloud as an entity can ONLY occur post hoc, once the community has commented on the nature of the entity with tag sets. Assuming (or even requiring) that the attached notation is a cloud rather than a set invalidates a lot of the meaning you can derive from the resulting hypercloud. It means LESS that, knowing the annotations are clouds, that the word that comes up most often first is "prose," rather than in the current state of tag sets, the word "prose" occurs most frequently. This isn't intended as a heavy criticism of the idea of tag clouds as meaningful. On the contrary, I think the post hoc observation of tag clouds over time is THE best means of understanding how the community thinks of an entity. I disagree that its worth the cognitive overhead to think of tagging with tag clouds rather than sets. -- Alexander Williams ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Proprietor of the Squid's Redoubt (http://chancel.org:8000/Redoubt) _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.del.icio.us/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
