Trusted Collaborative Categorization

Every now and then, I'll go through my contacts' photos on Flickr! and add tags to them, tags which I believe to be appropriate to their photo. An example: many of them will post a photo of themselves, or part of themselves, but will not tag it with 'me'. So if I see the "Add a tag" link next to a photo, and I believe that they (or I) can benefit in some way by having a tag added, I will do so. I did miscategorize one photo as "rockstar", and afterwards the person told me in an offline conversation that he didn't think that tag accurately what he was trying to go for in that photo, and I told him that he can delete it if he felt it necessary and that I would feel no resentment. So that is my policy: add a tag when it feels right, and don't feel bad when they delete it from what is really their space.

The word "contacts" does not adequately describe what people will probably use "contacts" for. Flickr! is social software masquerading as a photo sharing site (it is many other things: it can also be seen as, at least in part, an online dating site), and people will use "contacts" to watch their favourite photographers as photos as well as to make explicit connections with like-minded (or unlike-minded) people. I'm not going to pretend I know everything there is to know about metadata and categorization—Karl is far more qualified—but letting people on your contact list also allows for trusted collaborative categorization. (At this writing, a transparent—and successful—attempt to become #1 in Google for the phrase "collaborative categorization" is ... #1 on Google. Hey, you gotta give credit where credit is due.) That means that not just anybody can come in and assign metadata to your photos, but only people you 'trust'. That could mean anything from "your photos are really great, so I'm going to let you categorize mine" to "you're a friend, therefore you understand me, so go ahead and add some rich data to my photo". That sometimes means that people will add "butts that didn't quit" to your photo of the University of Washington cheer team, but as I said in a comment, I was there and he's right, those butts indeed did not quit.

Comments

It's why I didn't remove your tag, it was your choice. I just found the "me" presomptuous and useless. :) Selfportrait says what is it. But me :D :))) I'm not more qualified. We are all qualified in certain domains ;) If we could really express this qualification. Unfortunately it's impossible with the tagging systems now.

If our weblogs are our resumes now, then at the very least you *look* more qualified than me. :) We had a funny moment in the office today about tagging: a few of us didn't know for certain when Easter was, but one of my colleagues said "if we all agree that this weekend is Easter Weekend, then that's when it is". That's one of the problems with tagging (and categorization in general?) is that we all have to agree what the categories are before we categorize something. It's worked for my friends when we all attended a semi-public event and agreed what the Flickr tag would be before we posted the photos, so that instead of each of us going to our individual weblogs to see when we posted photos, we could all just watch a unique (but still descriptive) tag for the photos to trickle in. Stories like that, I'm sure, abound in the realm of metadata. I like tags as a way to find related links for example. I don't like tags when they don't add anything to what people are writing about, for example when people add tags that are words they already use in the text of their writing. For me—and perhaps me only—keywords in the text of something act as if they were categories, but naturally flowing in the person's writing. If the rapper you're talking about is Dizzee Rascal, then mention the phrase "dizzee rascal" and I'll find out about it through the PubSub feed, or whatever the tool we'll use to track conversations of the future will be.

You can tag other people's photos?? I learn so much from you! (Thank you)

Actually there is a setting where you can let everybody, only your contacts, only people you designate as "friends" or "family" or only you can tag your photos. Find the "Photo Privacy" link on the footer, and you can change the setting there. That's why it's "trusted": you can set who (the groups of people) who can categorize your photos for and with you.

Lisa, anybody can tag my pictures ;) It's welcome even if I do not necessary agree with the chosen terms. It's part of the game in this level of granularity. :) I wish there was a more defined, refined granularity.