Via a post from the Tags/Networks/Narrative called Vocabulary Soup, I discovered another tagging community called, Get Your Damn Tags Right.
Occasionally, communities may well form around tagging. For example, the social music site Last FM has a group called "Get Your Damn Tags Right" which pretty much does what it says on the tin. I suspect that a quick search through various web2.0 sites will find groups interested in tagging.
The issue is whether this activity needs a new term to describe it. Emergent communicative practices from communities are not exactly unknown - the whole practice of the ethnography of communication lies in understanding the relationship between culture and communicative practice - and tagging is, in my view, a communications device. Part of this project revolves around exactly this issue.
That said, I love the term "feral hypertext". Jill Walker coined the term in 2005 in a great and provocative article. Feral hypertexts and tag clouds as narratives are one the trajectories of this project. I'm not sure where it will go, that's why it's an "Adventure in Tagging."
I looked at the Get Your Damn Tags Right community statement of purpose:
So, are you one of those people who absolutely hate having your music files mistagged? The artist has to be correct, the title the proper title, the track listed for the correct album, and all have to be spelled exactly right and with proper capitalization? This is the place for you.
And, as we may never have song moderation, this may be an eternal problem, unfortunately.
If you ever happen to see a group member with mistagged music, feel free to publicly give them crap about it here in the forums. Just do it in a friendly manner (as in pointing and laughing, not pointing and insulting). And mention the proper information for the tag, so that it's also constructive.
Be aware that this group focuses on badly tagged music files, not the tags applied to artists and songs by users of this site.
On the public forum, the discussion threads range from making fun of sloppy taggers "What's the worse tag you've ever seen?" (Answer: Pink Floyd as Punk) to threads asking for advice about what tag to use when tagging, Opera, for example.
Now, back to this other idea about Feral Hypertext
Definition of Feral:
Feral (a): Of an animal: Wild, untamed. Of a plant, also (rarely), of ground: Uncultivated. Now often applied to animals or plants that have lapsed into a wild from a domesticated condition.
Definition of Feral Hypertext:
The most interesting—and the most feral—aspect of Flickr is the tagging. Instead of providing a set list of possible keywords, Flickr allows users to type in any tag they like. Each photo can have as many tags as desired.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.