thingamy

accessible knowledge (tags, not trees continued)

Comprehensive, faster, and better delivery of knowledge by anataxonomy?

Hmm...:

"Knowledge is an appreciation of the possession of interconnected details which, in isolation, are of lesser value."

add that;

"Knowledge is distinct from simple information."

(From the good people at wikipedia)

Replacing the limited "trunk and branch" or "path" identifiers of a tree-structural organising method, anataxonomy's namespace imparts a comprehensive set of relationships for the object/subject:

When I tag an object or a subject I impart some of my knowledge, right or wrong, useful or not, does not matter. The moment another person with a different view adds his tags, the knowledge about the object/subject as communicated by its namespace will increase. Third one... and so forth, never ending story.

Two requirements:

1. The tagger must disclose him/herself and significant information about the tagger must be freely available. If possible, reason for why the tag was added should be added. This would then amount to what's known as "history source analysis".
2. No filter, standards or other form of single sets of logic may be used to limit tags. What the next chap feels is wrong, I may think is right. Two sides in a war will write two different history books - filter out one and knowledge loses out.

Anataxonomy - efficient organiser of objects and subjects, direct delivery of comprehensive knowledge and a true identifier - all in one swat - and all better than existing and separate methods?

Just a suggestion over the morning coffee... :)

[P.S. Aristotle pipes in with some support: "His ten classifications of individual words, the Categories of Aristotle - substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, passion - the questions we would ask in gaining knowledge of an object." Quite specific, even in sequence, but nevertheless tags...]

logical discussion (tags, not trees continued)

A few weeks ago I had a tag-discussion with a very smart chap who's work I respect a lot:

He suggested that filtering should be used to minimise the number of irrelevant tags that will appear if an object/subject is open to tagging by all.
Applying logic to the namespace-creation as it were.

He argued that if "Britney Spears" namespace consisted of a long row of "relevant" tags and somebody adds "nano technology", then that would be silly and should be filtered out.

OK, sounds reasonable... filtering, standards...

But, hang on, say a kid in Brixton started a rumour that Ms Spears had some sort of nano technology implanted in her left breast. Daft of course (and apologies to Ms Spears for the absurd idea), but still, it would not take long before a group in Brixton would use "breast" and "nano technology" as their first tags if they were to find the object of this fine lady.

And, the extra tags will not affect the namespace usability when in anataxonomy finding mode. It would merely broaden the group of users-that-can-find-the-object and perhaps even heighten the knowledge that can be gleaned from the namespace!

The grudge I hold towards tree-structures is the logic-applied-at-source and the ensuing:

• I have to assimilate the logic of the creator (wonder where this web designer placed employees in his navigation tree...)
• I need a manual (PKZ-8763-vy-55? What car part would that be I wonder, looking over the shoulder of my friendly Audi repair shop mechanic...)
• I need training (elevating the confusing to "intuitive", but effectively leaving out my not-so-young mother who's quite new to computing...)

With anataxonomy-in-practice we would have none of that, so why apply any kind of logic to free-tagging? Then the whole replace-tree-structure-exercise would be for the birds...

Let's not.

Let's have logic-free anataxonomy and bye-bye to training, manuals and loosing our ways :)

drifting away from the trees (tags, not trees continued)

David Weinberger here extracts this point from a post by Tom Coates here:

"Some use tags as folders to house objects, others use them as descriptions of objects."

Well put, and I would venture to add "tags as groups", as in the object being a member of a group.

Still semantics, dependent on where you come from, where your head's at that precise moment.

But all good and useful angles I would add.

[NOTE: My following points are dependent on the use of multiple-tags-interception method / anataxonomy-in-practice (pls use Firefox/Safari) along the lines of this example to find an object / subject.]

Tag as description:

• Adds meaningful knowledge to the namespace, in particular if we had some information about who tagged, when it was tagged and why the tag was chosen (source analysis in history comes to mind).
• Pro: Can be rather precise.
• Con: Too precise and may require assimilating logic of tagger.

Tag as membership to a group:

• Close to "tags as description", following the classic human attitude of "Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are" kind of approach. Useful, but I would have to keep those tags quite dynamic, first impressions having a tendency to be wrong :)
• Pro: Almost like a metatag, gives lots of information in one go. Imprecise, requires less logic assimilation.
• Con: Very wide, very metataggish and have thus to be quite dynamic as view of object/subject changes over time.

Tag as position:

• Useful to describe physical whereabouts of course, easy to fall back to when in a tree-structure-mode.
• Pro: Good starting point when moving from tree-structure, porting my 593,406 files from tree-structure to tag based structure could be by tagging purely with folders, including sequence of course. Then add meaningful tags as time passes.
• Con: It's after all tree-structural and sequence matters thus assimilating tagger-logic is required!

In summary:

It does not matter where we start as long as we let the process flow towards what is natural, whatever that would be (you know where I stand, but this works even if I'm wrong - cool eh?).

No extra and precise tag will ruin for the other tags. No imprecise tag is useless unless on its own. Even tree-structural tags can be useful as it tells a story of times past :)

Add the paradox raised by Tom that a hundred year old subject/object where "obvious" tags would change over time: Using the "anataxonomy in practice" the new or old tags would not matter, modern man would use the current cloud while the ultra-conservative would use the old set - and none would ruin for the other!

Example: Take a HR system using tags only to "organise" people, start with a virtual hierarchy with departments and positions as tags - and the current managers will find the person. Then add tags to add knowledge about the people, factual descriptions (speaks fluent Italian), subjective impressions (grumpy in the morning - tagged by subordinate, friendly in the morning - tagged by boss ;)

Add more tags - at some point the hierarchical tags does not matter any more. That would make the transfer from hierarchy to tag based structure rather painless!

Knowledge of the person would move from the "heard in the cafeteria" or "fifth paragraph, second page on a CV in some drawer" to a common space adding transparency, better use of resources and dynamic increase in namespace-value.

:)

boolean conversation (tags, not trees continued)

"To OR or AND, that's the question."

Some very smart chaps have their say on the matter:

Valdis says: "It is an AND situation... hierarchy AND network"

Craig says: "In other words we need hierarchical structures AND network structures to move forward."

Doc suggests diplomatically and with my favourite metaphor of the month (!): "That makes it a tree of a very short sort, perhaps the height of moss."
I'll read that as a cautious support for the OR camp :)

Now, in contrast to pure tree-structured organising systems like file systems, data bases, etc. - a (organisational) hierarchy has two tasks:

1. Organise data (resources, transaction data, information, objects etc.) so they are easily found when needed.
2. Structure and direct the process flows.

Keep those task apart and I think the discussion will be easier.

Obviously, anataxonomy and our little practical example (pls use Firefox/Safari) will only be able to handle the data organising. But I would notch up an OR for this "half" of the hierarchy purpose.

Structuring the process flow is a different story as no real practical alternative for this task exist.
So it would be an AND today, hierarchy AND network structures (or whatever) supporting the views of Craig and Valdis.

But find an alternative method to organise the process flow, then the hierarchy could be superfluous. And OR being the choice.

Funny thing, this is precisely what we're working on, the (main) Thingamy system should be able to deliver the process flow structure. With the anataxonomy method for data organising built in, then both task should be covered by one system (but with two methods).

Then I may be able to say hierarchy OR something else!

More interesting experiments to come, watch this space for such (but after a few weeks of summer slowness I'm afraid :)

tags, not trees

Take my new tree-structure-free gizmo (pls use Firefox/Safari) out for a test drive:

What is it?

Whatever you want it to be: Navigation-free website. Tags-only blog. Complicated-to-simple database. Active resource picker. Knowledge and learning base. File system. Whatever. An experiment for the heck of it.

Basically a different approach to organise data, finding data, and transferring knowledge.

An example of no-tree-structure-at-all. Anataxonomy in practice:

• Organising:
  Free, dynamic and imprecise tagging of objects/subjects vs. fixed positioning in two-dimensional tree structure.
• Finding / Identity:
  Intersection/overlapping of multiple imprecise tags with no regard to sequence nor logic vs. precise navigation following learned standards / unique logical positions.
• Knowledge:
  Object/subject relationships directly visible in identity vs. identity plus large amounts of data linkage.

Enough talk, here's the tagwork, but first a few hints to ease you into it:

(Please, please use Firefox or Safari... anything but the "that browser which cannot be named", otherwise some features (modern technology and such) does not display nicely.)

1. Write "wa" in the field.
2. Click on "War", then "Wall" - see what happens.
3. Write "sm" in field instead.
4. Click "Smile".
5. Unclick "War".
6. Got it?
7. Click on any object-link and see whole text body, add comment (including more tags to comment) or add yet more tags to object/subject.
8. If you need to create a new tag use "Add tag" on top of tag list.
9. Please add another "art object" by hitting "Add object" on top of tag list and tag it at will!

[Note: The "art data base" is not the world's largest with its 15 objects (OK, I'm lazy, and no DB import function yet :), so feel free to add more objects. Anything is appreciated, it's only a test man!]

Now go there: http://thingamy.com/tagwork/ - enjoy! (pls use Firefox/Safari)

P.s.
The "tagwork" is a hands-on experiment, its traits are intrinsic to the Thingamy run-the-business system as base for the system's built-in communication (CMS, blog, mail-client etc.) and any interface where resources/data/objects/subjects have to be organised and found (HR, production, accounting, reports, etc), and choices have to be made (in process, workflow, etc.).

That said, the example have a nice admin back-end and can stand alone as a CMS, data repository, file system replacement (heh, why not?), blog system (let's add RSS and trackback), different take on wikis or whatever you could imagine.

tree-structures, are we hardwired?

If I say "Book" and "42", what comes to your mind? Some "Hitchhiking" perhaps?

What with "Umbrella" and "Film"? Any film titles coming to mind?

Add "Nanny", "Flying"... would that be "Mary Poppins"?

See? Your brain is quick and naturally wired to intercept iffy tags!

Nevertheless, I often hear that tree-structures are necessary and that we are hard-wired for tree-structure organising: Hierarchies, folders...

That I would argue, humbly of course, is bogus.

Would "Film > British location > Female lead > Disney > Family > etc." trigger "Mary Poppins!" as promptly?
Nah, didn't think so...

We're naturally inclined to tag imprecisely and freely - and locate any object or subject intercepting those tags. Fast, efficient and without training. And without any quest for standards.

In other words, we need no classic tree structured data sorting. We would be better off without.

And with that goes most of the reason for hierarchies. And with hierarchies goes the command and control nodes named management.
And then departments, and thus marketing as we know it.
And titles.
And how we build knowledge. And how we learn.

And why not rethink, remake and replace the whole shebang? All of the above.

Yeah, why not? It's only Sunday, enough time to make the world a better place by the end of year :)

Comte de Buffon was right, perhaps

Big thanks to David Weinberger and his post "Linnaeus and Buffon - Tales of Classification Superheroes".

Thus he kindly made me aware that what we're discussing today is like... ehh... 250 year old stuff.

Well, better being late than never I say.

If only Buffon had the current technology available back then... cannot but think that the hierarchical system won over the multiple purpose and multiple criteria method due to technical constraints:

Not easy to use hyperlinks and multiple tags in bound tomes of paper...

But today it is, let's pick up where the good Comte de Buffon left us and show the fans of Carl von Linnae what a perfectly good (?) alternative could have been. :)

[NOTE: New version of test (pls use Firefox/Safari) for Buffon-friendly iffy-tag-interception method coming in a few days.]

ataxonomy (even more on tags)

Pretending to be Greek in a late afternoon...

Taxonomy
from Greek - "arrangement method/distribution"

• Arrangement at source (fixing position for object)
• Using tree-structures
• Two dimensional relationships between objects
• Like links, changes at source breaks the system
• Precise and sequential - any fault breaks the system
• Precise and sequential - target must know the semantics, the standards
• Understanding based on knowledge of standards and topic-semantics
• Value and knowledge delivered by ID limited and set at source (first name, family name etc.)

Ataxonomy (originally Anataxonomy, see note below)
freely gleaned from Greek - "without-arrangement method" (how's that for passing as ancient Greek?)

• No arrangement at source (no fixed position for object)
• No tree-structure, no structure at source
• No limits to dimensions for relationships for objects
• Changes at source have no effect at target (object tags follows object changes)
• Non-sequential and imprecise, error friendly
• Non-sequential and open, target does not need to know semantics or standards
• Understanding independent on standards and topic-semantics
• Value and knowledge delivered by ID (tags cloud) unlimited and increasing by use

Ataxonomy in practice:

"Free-tagging and iffy-tags-interception" as in this test or this tags-only-Thingamy-official-site (pls use Firefox/Safari, anything but MS IE in fact).
Bit more about the methodology below - here, here and here.

Any ancient-Greek linguists out there? Could need some help... :)

[Linguistic update: Dimitris points to "ana" mapping to "re" in English as does Elias in a comment on the Thingamy site-by-tags-only: "As a native greek speaker I have to comment on "anataxonomy". The greek prefix "ana" is usually the equivalent of the english "re". For example the word "genisi" means birth and "anagenisi" means rebirth. So that makes "anataxonomy" means something like re- arrangement method. The "a" prefix is the one that implies "without". Therefore I suggest renaming it to "ataxonomy"."
Suspect "Ataxonomy" it should be then!]