Dave Winer points out in some comments here that what we was really trying to say was:

You guys want users to enter metadata, I’m looking for ways to get around tha because I have found that people don’t even spell things right, much less label things.

He’s right- of course.

Nobody wants to attach tags, categorize, define their posts as something specific or even THINK about what theyr’e doing - first.  It’s a “shoot from the hip” socieity.   Paul Kedrosky calls them lazy.

Both Paul and Dave are right.  So what do we do?

The ‘automatic’ school of thought believes that your content itself is enough to discern what it is you’re about.  Others think this knowledge can be discerned from who your Friends are or what Groups you’ve joined.  Or what music you listen to.

My favorite automatic technique is simply matching the interests, friends and groups you’re a member of - to each other - and viewing those similarities.  You can (at least) then become a FRIEND of someone who has similarities with you.  That’s what we did at 1UP.com.

So is the issue: “automatically figure who people are - so they don’t have to manually attach meta-data” or is it something else?  Is it really such a chore to attach tags?

Well as Dave points out - I don’t categorize or attach tags to my posts - so call me lazy.

Do we really think we don’t NEED tags, folksonomys or even meta-data at all?

HHHHHHHHHHmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - I’m not really sure.  I don’t there’s one answer. People are different.  Clearly Dave Sifry and Dave Weinberger like tagging.  Me - I kind of liked Matt Mower’s “Live Topics” and Paolo’s “k-collector”. And anything that Phil does.

BTW I did notice that Paul puts his favorite books on his blog. I guess he’s not too lazy for that.  And Dave Winer - well this is not a man anyone would call lazy. He categorizes, plots, designs and gets analk - just like the rest of us.  Only in his own way.

I doubt any algorithm could figure out what Dave is about.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 8:38 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.