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August 11, 2006
In-line tagging at LibraryThing
Posted by David Weinberger
Tim Spalding has taken discussion forums a big step forward over at LibraryThing. The concept is simple but could make a real difference because it allows forum msgs to be aggregated in multiple ways. When you’re entering a msg at a forum, you can put a title or author in brackets and LibraryThing will take a stab at identifying what you have in mind. Think of it as in-place tagging. You can thus easily find all the posts about a book. And all the references to a book or author will be lilsted on that book or author’s page.
Because LibraryThing knows which books you own (because you’ve told it), it can feed you msgs about any of them. And, as Tim points out, this unhiding of msgs will change the temporality of posts: Rather than msgs fading into obscurity a few days or weeks after they’re posted, they’ll be easily findable and reply-able.
Very cool.
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1. John Breslin on August 11, 2006 9:50 AM writes...
BoardTracker have been providing tagging modules for various forum systems for the past year or so - more at this page. This could also be used for any domain in theory, e.g. tagging something in a library-related forum with title:grisham.
Permalink to Comment2. bodoro on August 11, 2006 12:06 PM writes...
Eine wirklich super Seite!
Permalink to Comment3. Norman David Gerre on August 13, 2006 1:36 AM writes...
last.fm has been doing something like this for a while with user journals. Journals that mention a particular artist are displayed on that artist's page; likewise for albums, tracks etc.
I daresay that this system will suffer some of the same problems, e.g. that most of the syndicated content will be only tangentially related -- mentioning a book isn't the same as talking about it. Forum messages will be even worse than journals in that a lot of them won't make sense out-of-context.
Permalink to Comment4. Stephen on August 14, 2006 3:56 AM writes...
Take a look at mailspaces.com which automatically creates inline links in discussion messages every time a name or date or tag that it already knows about is mentioned. It will also automatically create new tags (or suggest them for creation) when it sees particular terms reoccurring in messages.
These links also appear in the e-mails that get sent out to members (it has a built-in mailing list server) so people on ordinary e-mail get the benefit as well as those who want to work on the web. And if there's something you want to refer to specifically, then you can use wikilinks in the text of your messages too.
Permalink to Comment5. Anonymous on August 16, 2006 3:37 PM writes...
Reading your book, Cluetrain Manifesto at the moment David. I am greatly enjoying it, as I am reading Schumacher's book, Small is Beautiful, in parallel, and love the interaction of ideas I am experiencing between the two works.
Thanks,
Permalink to CommentBrian.
6. Brian O' Hanlon on August 16, 2006 3:47 PM writes...
David,
I used to do msg boards, long, long before I used to blogs. Thing about msg boards, is I would compare them to visiting your home town, after a long while. Everything seems to be in its places, same people, same discussion probably - just slight modified to mark the passing of the ages.
However, when you notice anything out of place - it pisses you off. One's own home tome is supposed to stay the same forever. Msg boards have some of this.
Whereas, blogs, are described by many people as being like a watercooler. You should actually listen to some of the radio interviews here, by some urban designers and thinkers. You will probably find some useful material, which looks at the social fabric of our urban environment.
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thestatewearein/1054026.html
The State We Are In: Planning Our Cities
Thanks again,
Brian O' Hanlon.
Permalink to Comment7. Bujar Kocani on August 23, 2006 5:36 PM writes...
Iam pleasure that joining with you
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