This is drill-down #2 on What To Do On Behalf of Informal Learning. This time I’m going after item #5 in the list: Improve content findability. It is both with considerable excitement and trepidation that I start down this path as I know there is several months worth of work and 20 or more posts for me to begin to work through what I either halfway know or I am anxious to learn in this topic area.
I’m going to start with a series of posts related to tagging, folksonomy, taxonomy, web directories and the like. For this first post I share three vignettes that had me thinking the most in this area over the weekend:
Vignette #1: Elliott Masie launched one of his many interesting experiments as part of the Learning2006 conference: a project to create a link directory of the body of knowledge associated with the professional discipline of Learning. The LearningLinks site concept is that anyone can contribute a link related to the subject of learning (i.e. a Learning Link) and also guide where this link fits within a hierarchical navigation scheme (i.e. directory). An editor on Elliott’s staff then does the actual mechanics of posting. After the link is added readers can rate the link as in the 5-star system popularized by amazon.com. “Learning Links is based on mutual respect and constructive collaboration.”
Vignette #2: When tags work and when they don’t: Amazon and LibraryThing:
Both LibraryThing and Amazon allow users to tag books. But with a tiny fraction of Amazon’s traffic, LibraryThing appears to have accumulated *ten times* as many book tags as Amazons’s 13 million tags on LibraryThing to about 1.3 million on Amazon.
Something is going on here, something with broad implications for tagging, classification and “Web 2.0″ commerce. There are a couple of lessons, but the most important is this: Tagging works well when people tag “their” stuff, but it fails when they’re asked to do it to “someone else’s” stuff. You can’t get your customers to organize your products, unless you give them a very good incentive. We all make our beds, but nobody volunteers to fluff pillows at the local Sheraton.
This is a great post with over 40 comments so far.
Vignette #3: Graham Attwell’s Social networks based on commonality of interest:
I am increasingly interested in how we can use social bookmarks or tagging as a form of developing social networks based on content. We all know that social networking is a powerful tool for informal learning. But the friend of a friend type approach assumes a commonality of interest which does not always exist!
Tagging has the potential to generate similar social networks – based not on just friendship – however many steps renewed – but based on commonality of interest.
Photo Credits: Zumberto (tag) and Colin Maykish (folders)