Tag Archives: folksonomy

Metadata:William Maldonado

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Metadata is a very resourceful tool and can become even more resourceful If it could be read properly. The Immersion program made by Deepak and Daniel is a great example of showing this because it takes all the metadata and builds a understandable interface which it makes it easier to read. I like immersion for most of the statements they made they made but its also scary because big companies have the money to have a software such as immersion built to see their users data and habits, through doing such thing they can personalize advertisement according to the users metadata information. Although it is nice to see things advertised that we might actually like, I feel like letting companies have such information be at their finger tips without our consent is violating our rights and if letting them use this information increases their profit the least they can do is pay their users for using their metadata maybe then it might be a ok. Now in the folksonomy article I agree with Jessica Dye when she states thats folksonomy isn’t a anarchy. The reason I agree is because if a community sets the rules for using tags for categorizing data to be found easier and the community follows the rules then  there isn’t need for a higher authority to keep everyone following the rules and personally I like the use of tags.

Order through Metadata.

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The metadata talked about in Badke shows us that sometimes you have to give up some control to find what you want.  Using a subject heading search can at times be a lot more effective than a keyword search; although I still believe a keyword search is more convenient for a lot of people.  A keyword search maybe broad but it will at times like a subject heading help lead you somewhere you weren’t planning to go.  Honestly were it not for school I would seldom use a subject heading/taxonomy search mainly because a keyword search is how I usually search for anything on my phone or at home. For me a keyword search is like a bad habit I have been trying to quit but it’s just too easy to keep picking up.
I feel as though the Jessica Dye article on folksonomy was written about one year too early. I say this because almost three weeks before the article on March 21st Twitter happened; twitter in my opinion is one of the ultimate folksonomy tools and would have surely given Dye’s article even more validity.  Almost everything on twitter gets tagged no matter what it is, the whole hash-tag phenomena has taken off since twitter started being used by the public.  One problem with folksonomy happened in class when professor Leonard mispelled ‘Nicky Minaj’ in a picture search and everyone who misspelled her name and tagged her picture with a “y” showed up, but when she corrected her search and spelled it with a ‘i” it displayed a lot more pictures.  I bring this up to show that folksonomy is not always used correctly, if you misspell a word that word still gets tagged with that misspelling so any picture with that misspelling might not show up for someone who searches for it while using the correct spelling.

MetaPower

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The reading of chapter four of Badke’s book Research Strategies, an eye opening account is given about metadata and the power of controlled vocabularies. Before reading this chapter I used to think that keyword search was the ultimate way in which one could search for information when researching for a paper. I was stunned to learn that it had many flaws which  contributes to why searching for information on a research topic was so difficult in the past. Instead of struggling through trial and error on using keywords in a database search engine, it is better to use controlled vocabularies or subject headings to find what you are looking for, because it encompasses every set of data related to what you are looking for. It would be nice if this powerful tool or way of searching could be implemented to the WWW because it would make life much easier. I may be too quick to judge because the increased use of the electronic tagging system known as folksonomy might just become the WWW’s “controlled vocabulary.” The only difference is that it won’t be controlled, as it is user created which is very cool.

On the other hand the reading  Graphs by MIT Students Show the Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata by Crockford revealed how simple pieces of metadata from an individual’s email activities can reveal a whole lot about who they are. This was where I realized that metadata could be used for so much more than just searching for information. Despite all the positives, metadata can be used for the bad just as much as the good. Truth is that any invention that wields power faces this same problem. Look at the internet for example, it hosts a wide variety of positive features that I can’t even begin to list, but of course there are those who would use it for various malpractices. Knowing this do we stop using the internet? No, we be the responsible people that we are and use it for good.