billpapa.org Reading (b)log

Another paper submitted for the alt.chi 2007 conference. This comes from PARC and is a study of the del.icio.us website using metrics based on entropy.

Their results are interesting:

1. The efficiency of social tagging is decreasing.
2. The efficiency of social navigation affored by the tagging system is decreasing
3. Users overlap in places they visit more strongly than before

These results should be expected by anyone who has any experience in complex systems. The story goes as follows growth-maturity-senescence (Salthe, 1993). Users start using more tags (and more specific tags) in order to cope with the overflow of information. This leads to phenomena connected with overconnectedness (sic): previously useful tags become generic and useless (e.g. HCI tag), so users fight this by using ever more specific tags. If this phenomenon continues, navigation using tags becomes useless for anything but personal bookmarks (where generic tags are still useful and specific tags are familiar). Infact, we could go back to just search the results (e.g. Google) and refrain from using tags altogether.

How can we battle entropy? Introduce order or use Ariadne’s thread.

• Order: Introduce another level of organization. Groups of common interests/communities of practice etc. Don’t follow the everything tagged HCI, but everything tagged HCI by your own group.
• Ariadne’s Thread: Stalk other users. Users stumble upon other users who bookmark meticously and have similar interests and follow their habbits.
  

References

• Chi, E. H., & Mytkowicz, T. (submitted). Understanding Navigability of Social Tagging Systems. Paper presented at the alt.chi 2007.
• Salthe, S. N. (1993). Development and Evolution: Complexity and Change in Biology. Cambridge: MA: MIT Press.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 24th, 2007 at 6:09 pm and is filed under HCI, tagging, web2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.