MetadataCategorization is wrong
In mijn dagelijkse Bloglines-rondje beperk ik me meestal tot het vluchtig scannen van titels en samenvattingen. Zo heel af en toe stuit ik echter ook op boeiende langere artikelen waarvoor dan wel wat scroll-werk vereist is. Zo verging het me vandaag ook bij een geweldig artikel van Clay Shirky: Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags. Het stuk is absoluut de moeite waard om in zijn geheel te lezen, het staat vol met ijzersterke quotes:
De inleiding:
Today I want to talk about categorization, and I want to convince you that a lot of what we think we know about categorization is wrong. In particular, I want to convince you that many of the ways we’re attempting to apply categorization to the electronic world are actually a bad fit, because we’ve adopted habits of mind that are left over from earlier strategies.
Over de Yahoo-directory:
Yahoo is saying “We understand better than you how the world is organized, because we are trained professionals. So if you mistakenly think that Books and Literature are entertainment, we’ll put a little flag up so we can set you right (...). They missed the end of this progression, which is that, if you’ve got enough links, you don’t need the hierarchy anymore. There is no shelf. There is no file system. The links alone are enough.
Over de stille aftocht van de DMOZ-directory bij Google:
Is categorization a good idea? We can see, from the Yahoo versus Google example, that there are a number of cases where you get significant value out of not categorizing. Even Google adopted DMOZ, the open source version of the Yahoo directory, and later they downgraded its presence on the site, because almost no one was using it.
Over tagging:
If you find a way to make it valuable to individuals to tag their stuff, you’ll generate a lot more data about any given object than if you pay a professional to tag it once and only once. And if you can find any way to create value from combining myriad amateur classifications over time, they will come to be more valuable than professional categorization schemes, particularly with regards to robustness and cost of creation.
Het volledige artikel lees je hier.
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Reageerders
Er zijn overigens wel wat kanttekeningen bij te plaatsen:
Ontologieën toch niet zo overschat?