Shirky: Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags
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Saved by 194 people (-65 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-03-02
- Arche0 on 2009-11-30 - Tags ontology , categorization , research
- Marcora on 2009-11-18 - Tags tags , gmarks
- Anmelu on 2009-11-06 - Tags no_tag
- Martinnguyen on 2009-10-05 - Tags no_tag
- Bik3much on 2009-09-08 - Tags ontology , tagging , folksonomy , tags , classification , categorization , social-bookmarking
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The Parable of the Ontologist, or, "There Is No Shelf" #
A little over ten years ago, a couple of guys out of Stanford launched a service called Yahoo that offered a list of things available on the Web. It was the first really significant attempt to bring order to the Web. As the Web expanded, the Yahoo list grew into a hierarchy with categories. As the Web expanded more they realized that, to maintain the value in the directory, they were going to have to systematize, so they hired a professional ontologist, and they developed their now-familiar top-level categories, which go to subcategories, each subcategory contains links to still other subcategories, and so on. Now we have this ontologically managed list of what's out there.
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this is the Dewey Decimal System's categorization for religions of the world, which is the 200 category.
Dewey, 200: Religion
210 Natural theology
220 Bible
230 Christian theology
240 Christian moral & devotional theology
250 Christian orders & local church
260 Christian social theology
270 Christian church history
280 Christian sects & denominations
290 Other religions
How much is this not the categorization you want in the 21st century?
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on 2007-10-28 by dedlily
the key point is non overlapping
on 2007-11-26 by sallygla
Very true. A strength and goal of LCSH
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The search paradigm says the reverse. It says nobody gets to tell you in advance what it is you need. Search says that, at the moment that you are looking for it, we will do our best to service it based on this link structure, because we believe we can build a world where we don't need the hierarchy to coexist with the link structure.
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Browse versus search is a radical increase in the trust we put in link infrastructure, and in the degree of power derived from that link structure. Browse says the people making the ontology, the people doing the categorization, have the responsibility to organize the world in advance. Given this requirement, the views of the catalogers necessarily override the user's needs and the user's view of the world. If you want something that hasn't been categorized in the way you think about it, you're out of luck.
The search paradigm says the reverse. It says nobody gets to tell you in advance what it is you need. Search says that, at the moment that you are looking for it, we will do our best to service it based on this link structure, because we believe we can build a world where we don't need the hierarchy to coexist with the link structure.
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Domain to be Organized
- Small corpus
- Formal categories
- Stable entities
- Restricted entities
- Clear edges
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Domain to be Organized
- Small corpus
- Formal categories
- Stable entities
- Restricted entities
- Clear edges
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Participants
- Expert catalogers
- Authoritative source of judgment
- Coordinated users
- Expert users
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Domain to be Organized
- Small corpus
- Formal categories
- Stable entities
- Restricted entities
- Clear edges
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Participants
- Expert catalogers
- Authoritative source of judgment
- Coordinated users
- Expert users
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Domain
- Large corpus
- No formal categories
- Unstable entities
- Unrestricted entities
- No clear edges
Participants
- Uncoordinated users
- Amateur users
- Naive catalogers
- No Authority
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"Here are some characteristics where ontological classification doesn't work well":
Domain
- Large corpus
- No formal categories
- Unstable entities
- Unrestricted entities
- No clear edges
Participants
- Uncoordinated users
- Amateur users
- Naive catalogers
- No Authority
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You can also turn that list around. You can say "Here are some characteristics where ontological classification doesn't work well":
Domain
- Large corpus
- No formal categories
- Unstable entities
- Unrestricted entities
- No clear edges
Participants
- Uncoordinated users
- Amateur users
- Naive catalogers
- No Authority
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on 2007-10-28 by dedlily
IMPORTANT. see rizoma
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We are moving away from binary categorization -- books either are or are not entertainment -- and into this probabilistic world, where N% of users think books are entertainment. It may well be that within Yahoo, there was a big debate about whether or not books are entertainment. But they either had no way of reflecting that debate or they decided not to expose it to the users. What instead happened was it became an all-or-nothing categorization, "This is entertainment, this is not entertainment." We're moving away from that sort of absolute declaration, and towards being able to roll up this kind of value by observing how people handle it in practice.
It comes down ultimately to a question of philosophy. Does the world make sense or do we make sense of the world? If you believe the world makes sense, then anyone who tries to make sense of the world differently than you is presenting you with a situation that needs to be reconciled formally, because if you get it wrong, you're getting it wrong about the real world.
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