UBC Faculty Research and Publications

Curated Folksonomies : Three Implementations of Structure through Human Judgment Bullard, Julia

Abstract

Traditional knowledge organization approaches struggle to make large user-generated collections navigable, especially when these collections are quickly growing, in which currency is of particular concern, for which professional classification design is too costly. Many of these collections use folksonomies for labelling and organization as a low-cost but flawed knowledge organization approach. While several computational approaches offer ways to ameliorate the worst flaws of folksonomies, some user-generated collections have implemented a human judgment-centered alternative to produce structured folksonomies. An analysis of three such implementations reveals design differences within the space. This approach, termed “curated folksonomy,” presents a new object of study for knowledge organization and represents one answer to the tension between scalability and the value of human judgment.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International