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
karl (not verified)
Mon, 2005-03-21 19:25
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It's why I didn't remove your
Richard (not verified)
Mon, 2005-03-21 19:38
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If our weblogs are our resume
Lisa Chau (not verified)
Tue, 2005-03-22 16:25
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You can tag other people's ph
Richard (not verified)
Tue, 2005-03-22 17:28
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Actually there is a setting w
karl (not verified)
Wed, 2005-03-23 12:57
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Lisa, anybody can tag my p