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intention vs. interpretation

there is two different kinds of metadata, right? (well - probably lots more, but what do i know)

flickr tags = intentional (defined by creator of the content)

delicious tags = interpreted (defined by viewer or audience)

Same for websearches - header metatags are intended, while links to the page are interpreted.

One’s not better than the other. But they are totally different things and should not be combined without recognizing their different qualities.

I figure most web people already get this, but i just saw a blog post that made me wonder.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2006 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Whatever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “intention vs. interpretation”

  1. Maya Says:
    February 14th, 2006 at 5:21 am

    Hey Mike,

    I’m with you that the two tagging paradigms are distinguished by how people use them.

    But I’d add a core distinction: between a classificatory and an annotative use of tags.

    I get the vibe that we muse Flickr (or whatever) to provide some personal perspective on our photos but delicio.us (or whatever) to sort and retrieve our URLs.

  2. Boris Anthony Says:
    February 14th, 2006 at 10:36 pm

    Your intuition is right, in two cases: that there are more than one type of metadata, and that that there are more than two type of metadata. :)

    Implicit (system:filetype:mp3) is another.

    The distinction you point out is interesting insofar as it addresses “who does the tagging” and Maya’s “for what purpose”, or even “for who’s benefit”.

    Tags however are only one class of metadata. Remind me to draw you a stack next time. I’d love Ed B. to be around for that one so I can refine my model once and for all… :)

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