Vocabulary Patterns in Free-for-all Collaborative Indexing Systems
Journal
CEUR Workshop Proceedings
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2007-11-12
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Chen, Liming
Cudré-Mauroux, Philippe
Haase, Peter
Hotho, Andreas
Ong, Ernie
Abstract
In collaborative indexing systems users generate a big amount of metadata by labelling web-based content. These labels are known as tags and form a shared vocabulary. In order to understand the characteristics of that vocabulary, we study structural patterns of these tags by implying the theory of self-organizing systems. Therefore, we utilize the graph theoretic notion to model the network of tags and their valued connections, which represent frequency rates of co-occurring tags. Empirical data is provided by the free-for-all collaborative indexing systems Delicious, Connotea and CiteULike. First, we measure the frequency distribution of co-occurring tags. Secondly, we correlate these tags towards their rank over time. Results indicate a strong relationship among a few tags as well as a notable persistence of these tags over time. Therefore, we make the educated guess that the observed collaborative indexing systems are self-organizing systems towards a shared vocabulary building. Implications on the results are the presence of semantic domains based on high frequency rates of co-occurring tags, which reflect topics of interest among the user community. When observing those semantic domains over time, that information can be used to provide a historical or trend-setting development of the community's interests, thus enhancing collaborative indexing systems in general as well as providing a new tool to develop community-based products and services at the same time.
Language
English
Keywords
Metadata
tagging
shared vocabulary
online community
collaborative software
self-organizing system
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Book title
Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Emergent Semantics and Ontology Evolution, ESOE 2007 co-located with ISWC 2007 + ASWC 2007
Publisher
CEUR-WS.org
Volume
292
Start page
45
End page
57
Pages
13
Event Title
International Workshop on Emergent Semantics and Ontology Evolution (ESOE 2007) at the 6th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2007)
Event Location
Busan, Korea
Event Date
11.-15.11.2007
Official URL
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
51356
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
maassKowatschMuenster2007-vocabularyPatterns.pdf
Size
273.63 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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