homeworks

[jaebility]

One of my classes was put online since my professor was out of town; right now I'm listening to a lecture on controlled vocabulary, specifically controlled vocab vs uncontrolled vocab. They both have considerable advantages and disadvantages and generally a system/index has to choose one or the other. With controlled vocab you get more organization, consistency, fewer repeats and junk terms, but they're hard to update and maintain and come at a high cost. Uncontrolled vocab is easier to update, is done in the language of the authors, and can cover a wider scope, but at the same time it can lead to too many terms that are inconsistency and unspecified.

There has to be a way for a system/index to use both methods of organization. I think AO3 has a good method: users input their own tags (which are uncontrolled vocabulary) which are then wrangled behind the scenes into a hierarchy (making them semi-controlled). However I help wrangle tags and I can see how this system is flawed - users don't input the terms in correctly, characters have multiple names/identities or the same name is used for multiple, unrelated characters...

What would be a better way to incorporate user tags with system standards?

Yay what I'm learning has real-world implications!

Comments

[senmut]

Funny you should bring that up. I was just in process of being annoyed at the name tags for the G. I. Joe characters...old time fans know them best by code name, but the name tags were JUST their real names, with no code name. So Shana M. O'Hara was the name tag that popped. Considering I was one of the first to upload G.I.Joe fic, I distinctly remember tagging the full name Dashiell 'Flint' R. Faireborn, to get both the name and the name most would identify him by in one place, but that is not the naming convention that was codified as hard tags.

It makes it hard to tag, when you want to stick in the normal tagging conventions, but as a fan you know that the real name is NOT what other fans are going to look for.

[jaebility]

That's an interesting point! An information retrieval system's success is based on how well it serves the user, but users have such different definitions of what makes a good taxonomy. Nicknames, pseudonyms, and/or name changes are a huge pain to deal with.

If I understand AO3 naming conventions correctly, the way they deal with nicknames, translations of names, etc is to create a parent tag and then nest the other versions of the character's name under it. So that way someone looking for Flint will pull up Dashiell Faireborn and vice versa.