minor dilemma

I was uploading knowledge nuggets and came across a couple of reports where there were three field officers who collaborated and contributed information. While uploading, I was wondering whether I should upload these documents three times under each of the personas that contributed, or just upload it once and type the other personas names that were involved in making the report. I’m not so sure how tagging the document with the names would affect the search process. Would the same document just show up three times when doing a manual search for it ? Will the document show up on the contributors’ page even if I dont upload it specifically on the persons’ page?

I tried tagging both Grover and Peter on the reports that Sarah uploaded because they worked together.

When I did a search using another member’s for ‘grover’, this is what the search pulled up.

I found it quite strange that while all the collaborative work that Grover took part in was shown and the ones that he uploaded weren’t part of the search results. This probably means that if a user wants to upload a file and be credible for it, they’d have to type in their own name as a tag.

I tried searching for the keyword “long distance trails” in the search bar and this is what came up.

Only the file that Sarah updated came up in the search results and there was no mention of either Grover or Peter.

Judging by this, in order to get recognition for their work each of them would need to upload their own copies of the report – even if it is the same document on repetition. An alternative to that would be to find a widget that would allow the user to tag other users in the document. For now, I’ll just upload the document multiple times (one for each user involved) and also include the names of the other personas involved in the tag bar.

Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links and Tags

In Clay Shirky’s 2006 paper he explains how there has been a long,existing practice of categorization and classification. He states early on that the ways that we’re attempting to apply categorizations to the electronic world are actually a bad fit because we’ve adopted habits of mind that are left over from earlier stages. Methods of classification have changed drastically when it comes to the Web.

The categorization schemes in the past were only constructed to arrange entities that were already existing. It didnt have any way of preparing for what was to come. Categorizers in the past had to take on tasks such as mind reading (where they had to guess what users are thinking) and fortune telling (where they had to make predictions about the future).

Shirky later goes on to talk about tagging where he identifies John Schachter’s del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service for people keeping track of their URLs for themselves, but are willing to share globally a view of what they’re doing, creating an aggregate view of all users’ bookmarks, as well as a personal view for each user. Tags are simply labels for URLs which are selected to help the user in retrieving those URLs later. They are able to group related URLs together. There is no fixed set of categories or officially approved choices. Any words can be used to tag URLs, regardless of other people’s needs, interests or requirements.

Tags are important mainly for what they leave out. By forgoing formal classications, tags enable a huge amount of user-produced organizational value, at a vanishingly small cost.

This article is beneficial to the PV project because the PV project relies quite heavily on the use of tags as a search method. Users of the PV site should learn how to write tags and make use of them while searching for particular items.

Shirky also explains in this article what he thinks the benefits of having tagging systems are (which I also agree with):-

Market logic > he explains here that you’ll be able to generate more information by having many more people tag their own work as opposed to paying a professional to tag it just once. These amateur classifications become more valuable when they are combined. Users need not use the same words, there is no need for homogenization. Market logic allows many distinct points of view to exist, even in general disagreement. This is important to the PV project because there is no limit to the number of tags you can input in relation to the posts a user publishes (either in their profiles, or on personal pages). The more tags a person uses, the easier it is for others to find your work.

User and Time Core Attributes> Here Shirky explains that all tags come with the ability for people to tell who posted the tag and when they posted it. With this function, it becomes easier for users to decide whether they should acknowledge the tag or ignore it. In the case of the PV project, users can choose to ignore tags that are old and have become outdated. They can choose to prioritize the newer tags or tags made by influential people in their respective fields.

Signal loss from expressions > Shirky explains here that the signal loss in traditional categorization schemes comes from compressing things into a restricted number of categories (where the categories are too broad, eg “environment” instead of “landslides”). There is a signal loss in tagging when people do not have commonality in talking about things. Tagging gets better with scale as more people get involved with it.With the PV project, people are encouraged to tag as much as possible so that it would be easier for others to find information that they need.

Filtering is done after posting > Categorization is done after things are tagged. The existence of odd or unusual tag is a problem if it’s the only way a given link has been tagged. Once a link has been tagged more than once though, users can view or ignore the odd tags as it suits them, then the decision about which tags to use comes after the links have been tagged, not before. In the event that there are one off tags, they will not show up in the tag cloud. There is an example in the PV test site with Sarah’s profile, she specialises in a field that no one else on the PV specialises in and therefore it will not turn up in the tag cloud unless someone else joins the site and has similar interests to her.

Last but not least, merges as probabilistic, not binary> Here, Shirky means that there are partial overlaps between tags. For example, when people click on a ‘fire’ tag, the system will also bring up similar tags such as ‘burning’.

Elgg Personas

So I’ve finally come up with the background stories for each of the elgg personas. They arent very detailed but you can tell that there are connections between them. I chose the profile pictures of each persona to be a cartoon character that shares the same name as the person so that I didnt need to use pictures of random people without their consent.

Peter

Peter has lived in Halls Gap all his life and currently works at the Grampians National Park. He is a proud father of 7-year-old twin boys and spends what ever free time he has with them. His two boys also share his passion for nature, so during school breaks, it is quite common to see the family out doing outdoorsy activities such as camping, fishing and hiking. Having spent so much time in the wilderness, Peter trekked along many trails and watch them erode across time. This spurred his interest in finding out how to slow down this process so the trail would still be around for his future grandchildren to trek.

He was sent to the Prince Edward Island National Park in Canada to learn more about Erosion and Trail Management.

Chris

Chris lives at Tidal and has worked at Wilsons Prom National Park for over 10 years already. He is married to Jane  and lives in semi detached house near his workplace. In his spare time, he volunteers as a firefighter. He thought that this would be good for his career since Wilsons Prom is a fire-prone area and he always likes to be prepared for any possible situation that may occur.

He is a fire management enthusiast looking to be an expert in the field but also has experience managing trails. He met his wife in his second year working at Wilsons Prom and their interest in fire and finding ways to manage it in different environments was the starting point of conversation that got them interested in each other.

Jane

Jane lives at Tidal River and has worked at Wilsons Prom National Park for 14 years. She met Chris at a talk she presented in the department regarding peat fires that she learned about while she was working on attachment at the Yosemite National Park in California. In her free time, she helps vets by providing a small scale sanctuary for orphaned animals that were hurt in bushfires.

Grover

Grover lives at Little Desert and has been working at the Little Desert National Park for the past 20 years. He recently lost his wife in a car accident and hasnt been very socially active. He spends most of his time in seclusion, caring for his wife’s hydrophonics greenhouse (she was a botanist). Working at Little Desert National park, he specialises in weed control and trail management. The interest in curbing weeds is the result of a number of his wife’s potted plants dying due to insufficient nutrients in the soil – nutrients were taken up by the weeds and they flourished. He was sent to the Prince Edward Island National Park of Canada to investigate the weed control problem they experienced there and also to learn about trail management.

Sarah

Sarah lives in Bright and works at the Mt Buffalo National Park. She has only just started working here as she just finished her degree in Environmental Sustainability at the Swinburne University of Technology. She hasnt had very much experience in the field except she was recently sent to the Kahurangi National Park in New Zealand to analize the measures that were taken in order to ensure the sustainability of the national park. The Kahurangi National Park was created in 1996 so a lot of studies had been done before it was set up to ensure it would be able to sustain itself to last a long time.

Jim

Jim lives in Melbourne and works with Park Victoria. His main intention of joining this site is to see if he can find specialists to become speakers for a conference his department is hosting. He has found specialists for almost all the topics that are to be discussed in the conference; all except specialists on erosion.His purpose here is to see if he is able to use the system to find his specialist.

On the second sheet from the meeting last week, Adrian posed a few questions:

1. What does elgg want/do/need?

Elgg is an open source network that provides the functionality which allows people to set up social networking sites where like-minded people are able to meet online, share information and if need be, join forces to complete a task either externally (on the world wide web) or internally (as a local site for interdepartment communication).

Elgg requires the user to have a pre-existing webserver already running as well as some knowledge on how to do create websites using this server, either that or at least have access to people who have information on how to code websites.

2. How does it work?

In order to get elgg it to fulfill the requirements of your social networking site, plugins can be downloaded from the elgg site. For example, in the Parks Victoria test site, there is a focus on tags that are associated with information that is posted. In order to make the tags appear on the main page in the form of a cloud, a plugin called ‘tag cloud’ had to be downloaded and inserted into the mod file associated with the main site. This can be done with all sorts of add ons to make the site more interactive.

3.Why?

Having all these plugins gives the user better access to the various functions of the site. For example, using these plugins, the user will be able to find any and all information regarding fire management, just by clicking the ‘fire management’ tag in the tag cloud. It makes information easier to find and people easier to contact from this information.

4. What are the affordances and how do they affect the purpose of the actual site?

Elgg allows the administrator/creator to manage and take control over a social networking site. The site allows for cross-site tagging, powerful access over control lists, allows people to view the site over different modes (on computers as well as on mobile internet forms), it also allows people to personalise their individual pages and make use of pre-installed widgets. It also allows users to make use of RSS feeds and send messages internally to other users.