Stumbled across this old gem I'd bookmarked aeons back Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia Seems as true today as it was in 2001.
It's only a short piece on why your old metadata keywords in the HEAD section of an HTML document nearly always disappoint. Nevertheless its still a regular request in content management tenders.
This laziness is bottomless. No amount of ease-of-use will end it. To understand the true depths of meta-laziness, download ten random MP3 files from Napster. Chances are, at least one will have no title, artist or track information -- this despite the fact that adding in this info merely requires clicking the "Fetch Track Info from CDDB" button on every MP3-ripping application. Short of breaking fingers or sending out squads of vengeful info-ninjas to add metadata to the average user's files, we're never gonna get there.
The only hope for keyword metadata of this nature is for coordinated sites using the agreed schemas, for example the Australian Government AGLS schema. A great idea in theory, but I'm afraid you still have to rely on contributors allocating the right metadata -- despite the best CMS solutions guiding authors, users always seem to find a way to assign the wrong metadata, or most frequent of all, no metadata.
Posted by modius at 11:42 PM | Permalink
Trackback: http://blog.daemon.com.au/cgi-bin/dmblog/mt-tb.cgi/278
Hey Geoff
Do you think the "folkonomy" approach, such as deli.icio.us or flickr use, is workable alternative to the "coordinated" use of "agreed schema"?
The two main differences I see are:
a) The user doesn't have to read a manual or a spec to use the meta data. The meta data is what they want it to be rather than a dictionary of labels forced from on high.
b) The navigation is based on the meta data itself - meta data now has a tangible benefit to the user, its now the main way that other users will access their content.
Coming to a government site near you in 2015 :)
-Mark
Posted by: Mark Stanton on April 5, 2005 09:53 AM