User Classification?
It seems to me that the focus on classification of data is disproportionately large compared to the focus on classification by, for, and of users. There’s a huge ‘either or’ gap between data structures created by experts and streams of user created data. Among other things, we’re so used to the users being anonymous, and, by definition, that means that no responsibility is taken for any data they generate.
Does classification of organically grown content on the web have to be an oxymoron? There’s quite a conundrum behind this question. Enabling free unlimited growth to create value results in both lower value and increasing chaos. Establishing structures and imposing rules limits growth and concentrates (shrinks) power.
We talk constantly about enabling users, but what we really mean is giving them a useful tool that we either sell to them, or give in exchange for their tacit agreement to become part of our asset. No one talks about giving the individual an identity and a role. The best thing we have doing that is still eBay, and that is just a platform connecting individuals to one another. Blogging accidentally serves a corner of the human need for individualization, but what an unwieldy and disconnected hodgepodge it is already, and how does it connect, for most of us, to communal contribution and benefit beyond, once again, those individual personal connections?
The Google model, based on putting the search in the user’s hands is really great, but its resulting offer of quantity without quality remains frustrating. I’ve noted the Google search altering somewhat as a result of social networking aggregating the traffic of individuals who have learned to play the link game, combined with the element of popularity which is supposed to reflect quality content. Therefore, I now get a lot of blog and ‘news’ clutter on searches about certain medical or legal topics (for example). Specialized engines such as Lexis Nexis are fine for many things, but I know that there’s a lot more out there.
I see the internet as a looping linking maze. There are billions of web sites, many of them formally organized by one authoritative entity or another. Anyone with a website learns to work on how to be listed and categorized and found. Many an individual user, however, can often feel like a piece of flotsam, retreating most often to a safe corner (such as a community they’re comfortable in), and venturing out to wider realms only in determined forays for a specific result. Could addressing differentiation of identities and acknowledged value contribution make a difference to them, and each of us, as well?
Most users, for example, wouldn’t take time to tag, or to contribute to Wikis, on today’s web. They come here to find something for themselves, and then leave. I think only part of that is due to people being busy and/or selfish. What’s in it for me? is a question most ask automatically in response to such a proposition from an anonymous stranger. It is not necessarily our first or only response to an identified person who recognizes and knows us in a community where we have an identity and a sense of belonging. Millions of us do things every day for our common good and without wanting public credit or compensation. We often do these things anonymously. We don’t, however, spend time doing them for anonymous strangers about whom we know nothing. We have to be able to clearly make the connection between our personal contribution and a specific rewarding result in order to reach square one and be open to motivation. Since it’s not likely that the majority of users are going to ‘get’ the potential of the internet and become passionately devoted to it anytime soon, isn’t working on a place they ‘will’ want to contribute to and inhabit worthwhile? …unless, of course, the real future here belongs only to an elite few.
