Most tagging systems support the user in the tag selection process by
providing tag suggestions, or recommendations, based on a popularity
measurement of tags other users provided when tagging the same resource. In
this paper we investigate the influence of tag suggestions on the emergence of
power law distributions as a result of collaborative tag behavior. Although
previous research has already shown that power laws emerge in tagging systems,
the cause of why power law distributions emerge is not understood empirically.
The majority of theories and mathematical models of tagging found in the
literature assume that the emergence of power laws in tagging systems is mainly
driven by the imitation behavior of users when observing tag suggestions
provided by the user interface of the tagging system. This imitation behavior
leads to a feedback loop in which some tags are reinforced and get more popular
which is also known as the `rich get richer' or a preferential attachment
model. We present experimental results that show that the power law
distribution forms regardless of whether or not tag suggestions are presented
to the users. Furthermore, we show that the real effect of tag suggestions is
rather subtle; the resulting power law distribution is `compressed' if tag
suggestions are given to the user, resulting in a shorter long tail and a
`compressed' top of the power law distribution. The consequences of this
experiment show that tag suggestions by themselves do not account for the
formation of power law distributions in tagging systems.
