Collaborative tagging systems--systems where many casual users annotate objects with free-form strings (tags) of their choosing--have recently emerged as a powerful way to label and organize large collections of data. During our recent investigation into these types of systems, we discovered a simple but remarkably effective algorithm for converting a large corpus of tags annotating objects in a tagging system into a navigable hierarchical taxonomy of tags. We first discuss the algorithm and then present a preliminary model to explain why it is so effective in these types of systems.

@techreport{citeulike:739394, author = {Heymann, Paul and Garcia-Molina, Hector}, title = {Collaborative Creation of Communal Hierarchical Taxonomies in Social Tagging Systems}, school = {Standford University}, year = {2006}, number = {2006-10}, url = {http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2006-10}, keywords = {clustering, collaborative, folksonomy, kdubiq, ol, social, sosbuch, summerschool, tagging, taggingsurvey, taxonomy, webzu}, abstract = {Collaborative tagging systems---systems where many casual users annotate objects with free-form strings (tags) of their choosing---have recently emerged as a powerful way to label and organize large collections of data. During our recent investigation into these types of systems, we discovered a simple but remarkably effective algorithm for converting a large corpus of tags annotating objects in a tagging system into a navigable hierarchical taxonomy of tags. We first discuss the algorithm and then present a preliminary model to explain why it is so effective in these types of systems.} }

%0 = techreport %A = Heymann, Paul and Garcia-Molina, Hector %D = 2006 %T = Collaborative Creation of Communal Hierarchical Taxonomies in Social Tagging Systems %U = http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2006-10