Metadataethics And Mobchaos

David kicks off the series by interviewing novelist, BoingBoing co-editor, digital rights activist and entrepreneur Cory Doctorow. For Cory, piling up information without strict organizational rules can be workable provided that we have sufficiently reliable metadata. The problem is that people don’t all use metadata the same way or use tags consistently, and that can be a real obstacle to making coherent sense of piles of information.

David and Cory discuss the advantages and pitfalls of explicit and implicit metadata, tags and the rules governing the use and re-use of content in commerce and culture.

[Source: Wired: Metacrap and Flickr Tags: An Interview with Cory Doctorow Conducted by David Weinberger, author of the new book Everything Is Miscellaneous.]

Tag responsibly. Be explicit with your noise in the internet — the verbiage drivel, the laconic witticism, the metadata of information, the taxonomy of culture, the folksonomy of social networking — or you can just lump it altogether as miscellaneous. What’s the purpose of the NOINDEX-NOFOLLOW bits and bytes you upload to the server if not to be involved with the community as a whole.

When I bookmark a webpage through del.icio.us, it’s to my benefit to add many tags to it, both because it makes it easier for me to find it again, and because it helps other people find it as well. Weinberger advises us to “put each leaf on as many branches as possible”, building a tree that looks more like a hyperlinked pile of leaves.

[Source: Ethan Zuckerman: My heart’s in Accra » Everything is Miscellaneous]

If tagging isn’t your cup of tea, please incline to categorize, and I don’t mean being prejudice. Be impartial in its implicit nature. Explicitly the better, as stark as Lady Godiva.

Got a smut to share? Tagged: autofellatio, erotic asphyxiation (asphyxiophilia), rape roleplaying, ageplay, bondage, sadism and masochism, exhibitionism…as ironic as it seem, the keywords like these by itself prove to be a hit to the googling uninitiated. Thanks for the traffic, next time check the wikipedia if the nature of the terminology is what you really seek. Paraphilias and fetishes is a good start. Fancy to know what’s George Carlin’s seven dirty words? Wikipedia results: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits. (Later he added Fart, Turd, and Twat.) Yeah, I’m an SEO algorithm fibber.

The wordpress.com current folksonomy system is a bit baffling, since category is not a tag per se but they treated it as such. Blogger has it own tagging system called label. Stick with technorati tag for easier reference, even though both category and label ping back to technorati database.

So tag sensibly.

Technorati Tags: autofellatio, erotic asphyxiation, asphyxiophilia, rape roleplaying, ageplay, bondage, sadism and masochism, exhibitionism, paraphilia, fetish, sex, smut, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, turd, twat, george carlin

I say, sensibly.

Technorati Tags: boingboing, wired, podcast, interview, organization, taxonomy, folksonomy, social networking, flickr, technorati, del.icio.us, information, internet, metadata, tags, category, miscellaneous, chaos, system, books, cory doctorow, david weinberger, everything is miscellaneous, search engine optimization, seo, wordpress, blogger, wikipedia

Still, that’s too much. Scale back a bit.

Technorati Tags: podcast, interview, taxonomy, folksonomy, metadata, tags, books, cory doctorow, david weinberger, everything is miscellaneous

Better.

/end noise.