Flickr Vs Chaos
While flickr contains a vast library of pictures and the ease with which one can search for pictures with creative commons licenses makes it a useful tool for anyone looking for pictures. However, one of the trends I noticed while looking through the selection of pictures on the 35W Bridge collapse is that there are numerous duplicates and pictures that are similar to each other in composition. There is also the limiting factor that no two people think the same and thus view the picture and the tagging of those pictures in different ways making searching difficult as there is no overriding scheme for the labeling of those pictures. We saw this in our del.icio.us tagging, where, even when our main topic was the same we still were left with a large cloud of tags, including various spellings and phrasing of the same ideas. This makes searching difficult however it also allows for a greater accuracy in how those pictures are categorized instead of relying on a set number of predetermined tags. There is a difficulty is balancing utility and versatility, too much one way and the tool can become too chaotic and too far the other way makes it the labeling too rigid. While there are many photos of the bridge in the flickr database the range of subjects under the tag is very limited with most of the photos being duplicates of the same image with slight differences in point of view while not containing any new information.
Comments
I agree with you that no two people think alike. I mentioned in my blog, that searching through Flickr can be extremely frustrating because no two people will search for a picture with the exact description, and therefore limited sources are provided.
Posted by: Hilary Stowell | April 4, 2008 4:45 PM
I think your comments about some of the limitations of tagging on flickr are accurate and pose interesting questions about the tool. I wonder if tagging will be refined to limit redundancies and combine synonymous terms? These questions arose in my mind when reading about the Library of Congress project on flickr and a blog about the project actually raises these issues. They are willing to see what happens. I wonder though if they'll have a professional librarian clean up the tag clouds in the end? It also made me wonder if tagging could be applied to cataloging in general? Would it create a greater diversity of subjects and therefore more accuracy? Hmmmm. Library science is really changing!
Posted by: Sara | April 5, 2008 9:49 AM
Hey Anthony, I totally hear ya regarding the super-duper number of pics in flickr. It could be totally chaotic. "Too many cooks in the kitchen!"..."Too many pics in the app!" You and Hilary had both written about how people don't think alike and thus tag photos differently. Oy vey--more chaos. So I guess with a positive spin, we could think of it as organized chaos and because our class is so amazing we'll end up choosing the right ones. Go us!
Posted by: Hoang-Uyen N. | April 6, 2008 10:46 PM
I agree whole-heartedly about the messiness of Flickr. I felt the same way (so many tags, the messiness and overlapping of the tags) about deli.cio.us. I can only hope that with practice and our own accounts in both of these applications, we can set up our own catalog of pictures to use in the future.
Posted by: Amber | April 7, 2008 8:24 AM