Re: Hierarchical tags

From: David Huynh <dfhuynh_at_csail.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:14:10 -0500

I think we are on the same page. I'm not saying enforcing a tag
hierarchy--I'm suggesting a way to browse the data by using tags to
construct an on-the-fly hierarchical view. Which is pretty much the same
as that in the multiple categorization paper.

David


David Karger wrote:

> Drawing from a previous paper, I will note that there is no need for a
> hierarchy of tags in order to offer the ui you are proposing. As with
> our multiple categorization paper, I think it makes a lot of sense for
> the next step (completions off "firefox |" to simply offer for
> completion all those tags that co-tag and object tagged by firefox.
> Hierarchies are very seductive but you tend to want different
> hierarchies at different times, so it is bad to lock yourself in to
> one when you could instead get the same thing by more of a "faceting"
> approach.
>
> David Huynh wrote:
>
>> I think providing a way to browse data hierarchically through
>> user-assigned tags is the first item of business. This will look like
>> a normal folder tree view.
>>
>> We can also provide tag completion not just at the time of tag
>> assignment but also at the time of recalling items using tags. So, I
>> can start typing a tag
>>
>> f
>>
>> and PB would complete
>>
>> f|
>> irefox (39)
>> riend (48)
>>
>> then I type i and hit tab
>>
>> firefox
>>
>> now when I type comma and space, I get other tags of things tagged as
>> firefox
>>
>> firefox, |
>> extension (18)
>> flaws (6)
>> hacks (13)
>> javascript (2)
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
>>
>>> Brett Zamir wrote:
>>>
>>>> And how about a browseable hierarchy for tags as well, drawing from
>>>> Princeton's WordNet perhaps (as one option for those who didn't
>>>> want to
>>>> start from scratch), in order to allow the user to come across
>>>> results for
>>>> similar concepts (e.g., while browsing for the tag "pizza", one
>>>> could easily
>>>> get to tags for "pasta", etc.). This hierarchy could be editable
>>>> along the
>>>> lines of (and even interfaceable with) Wikipedia's category structure.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I've been thinking long and hard about this. Probably even too much.
>>> Clearly, the lack of relationships between tags is damaging,
>>> especially when the tag space starts to grow.
>>>
>>> The problem, though, is that the relationships between those tags
>>> should be folksonomized themselves, or we can run into trouble on a
>>> globally distribute tag space.
>>>
>>> For example: suppose you tag something with "blog" and I tag the
>>> same thing with "blogs". The edit distance between the label of our
>>> two tags is small enough that I can run a levenshtein distance and
>>> present you (or me or somebody else) with a potential relationship
>>> field
>>>
>>> blogs --- [edit text here ]---> blog
>>>
>>> then you can type "plural of" and it becomes another statement. At
>>> that point, now we have a relationship between your tag and mine,
>>> clearly typed as a relationship. Later somebody else might say
>>>
>>> "plural of" -(is a)-> "collapsable property"
>>>
>>> so that the system might know that when you find blogs or blog they
>>> really mean the same thing. (in OWL terms, a "collapsable property"
>>> does the same of an OWL equivalence but in the folksological space)
>>>
>>> The same emergence can be done by running such a distance against
>>> wordnet, which would yield the ability to draw equivalences between
>>> tags and words in wordnet... but again, those relationships are
>>> *YOURS*, not global, then I can decide whether or not I agree or
>>> disagree or even slightly want to differentiate myself from your
>>> vision... defaulting to agreeing which is by far the most common
>>> case in folksological spaces.
>>>
>>> I'm not inclined to introduce something that can't scale to an
>>> entire world of people tagging... and not tagging things apple or
>>> blog, but things like abortion or war or holocaust or religion or
>>> terrorism, where meaning *and* relationships are highly dependent on
>>> the personal context.
>>>
>>> And yes, there is an entire virgin research field on its own on
>>> doing non-DL reasoning on a folksological space and I am very
>>> interested in that research area myself, but tying tags to wordnet
>>> won't scale socially, therefore has very little appeal to me even if
>>> immediately would be useful.
>>>
>>> That said, this is only my personal opinion and I don't speak for
>>> the entire group... and remember, this is an open source project so
>>> patches are always welcome :-)
>>>
>
Received on Tue Nov 15 2005 - 17:08:03 EST