What Are We?
Just before Christmas CMS Watch threw a little firecracker into the taxonomy community (which we didn’t notice till New Year) when they threw out the following gleeful prediction for 2009:
“Taxonomies are dead. Long live metadata!
With social computing coming to the fore, it’s never been more obvious that everyone does not, and will never, categorize things in the same way. It doesn’t even matter what’s correct anymore (well, it does to me, but I’m not about to spend my days stopping people from tagging a map of Botswana with the word “Ohio.” ) While I’ll never agree with David Weinberger’s assertion that “everything is miscellaneous” (a taxonomist’s least-favorite word), I will assert that the days of the traditional, definitive, and single-hierarchy taxonomy are long behind us. Enter the varied and multi-faceted application of metadata, experienced as people would like to experience it.”
A couple of people rightly spotted the rhetohypical distortions of facts here: the assumption (only held among those deeply ignorant of post 19th century taxonomy practice – shame on you CMS Watch you should know better) that taxonomies are purely defined by single hierarchy structures; the failure to acknowledge that a taxonomist invented facets; and the careless neglect of the need for hierarchies of some kind once any controlled vocabulary list contained as metadata needs to be navigated by humans. Metadata without relationships doesn’t spin any wheels, and many of the relationships that metadata needs to capture will look suspiciously hierarchy-like.
This is bad and shallow journalism from people who should know better.
But apart from some sensible words from Stephanie and Seth, what’s more curious and to some extent more worrying is the flurry of worried self-examination this set up among the members of the Taxonomy Community of Practice.
“Should we stop calling ourselves taxonomists, and if so what shall we call ourselves?” people asked. This seems tremendously ironic to me because it implies that (a) taxonomists, deep down, desperately want to be accepted by the rest of humanity, which is not a thought that had occurred to me before and (b) that such a flippant and poorly-reasoned piece of flim-flam could get us in such a tizzy about what to call ourselves. Taxonomy is partly the science of names, after all. If we taxonomists can’t name ourselves and stick to our guns, what chance have we got with other people’s metadata?
Or perhaps we think that if we amuse ourselves for long enough with alternate names, the propensity of people to make silly predictions about our profession will somehow disappear.
13 Comments so far
- Theresa Regli
Patrick, may I suggest to Seth Earley that we debate this in real-time, free of personal insults, on one of his Community of Practice calls? I’m sure it would make for some lively discussion. Surely such a duel would be of great value to advancing the profession of information architecture and information management. That is, if you can handle firecrakers in real time.
And please pardon my typo above, in the third paragraph the last sentence should read, “Shame on you for extrapolating....”
By the way, who are the “couple of people” you mention? I’d also welcome direct conversations with them.
- Patrick Lambe
Thanks for stopping by and replying Theresa. We might still have that cup of tea sometime!
Here’s how your post reads:
1. Taxonomies are dead, metadata succeeds it - this is a caption so we have to assume this is the main message.
2. You then present the word taxonomy ONLY in terms of a popular and inaccurate misconception of it - in fact the misconception that results in so many bad taxonomies - and present other aspects of professional taxonomy work (eg facets, which BTW are in themselves also often presented as single hierarchies) as if they were solely the domain of metadata. This is misleading, and feeds off a popular misconception to make what looks like a cheap shot in favour of metadata work at the expense of taxonomy work.
Since from your reply this is clearly not out of ignorance, I have to assume it is out of mischief, and this needs to be called.
It would have been fine to say something like “the popular misconception of taxonomies as a single hierarchy will be on its way out this year, and enterprises will start to appreciate the value of metadata” - but instead you framed it as a death of taxonomy message, presumably to be provocative and get more eyeballs… I can’t think of another reason, so please help me here if there is a legitimate reason.
As for challenges, I think there are more substantive ones we can focus on, based on a more accurate representation of what taxonomy work and metadata work involve and the relationships between them. I think we’d agree on some of those challenges - business relevance for example. But taking a cheap shot based on a popular misconception is not a legitimate challenge in my book. I said “shame on you CMSWatch” because I respect and admire your (collective and individual) work, which I regard as one oriented towards education and awareness, not this kind of populist stunt.
I’d be happy to debate a real challenge if you can propose one that we have different perspectives on, but this is not a real one - at least as it is framed now. (We’d have to cope with timing logistics by the way, I am based in Singapore).
The focus of my post (expressed in my post title) actually was more on my worry at the reaction of the taxonomy community (which you will find in the TaxoCop thread started by Stephanie Lemieux on January 1st). As you say, a lack of confidence about what we/they do and how we describe it. That worries me far more, precisely because your “challenge” is such a weak one.
I do not, by the way, think that difficulty in defining a practice precisely is necessarily a mark of illegitimacy (if that is what you are implying) - it also happens in many disciplines and practices when there is rapid change. In the information space we are all of us finding our way and trying to evolve our understandings and our practices. Definitions compete and evolve across the space, not just in taxonomy work. Precision and concord will come with maturity and stabilisation.
You seem to be asking for a more respectful and collegial approach and I’m happy to accede to that - but your original prediction was not framed respectfully or collegially, and so you should expect that to be called out in the strongest possible terms.
- Keith DeWeese
Regarding, “But apart from some sensible words from Stephanie and Seth, what’s more curious and to some extent more worrying is the flurry of worried self-examination this set up among the members of the Taxonomy Community of Practice.”
This might be an outcome of top-down pressure from management still screaming “Prove ROI!!!” and for some reason just will not believe their taxonomists when it comes to metrics or the difficulties that exist in “monetizing” or “productizing” taxonomy, if it’s really possible for most taxonomists to do that in the first place!
It’s all related in my mind to a couple of library director bosses I had in another life who wanted staff to do everything but be librarians--"Do more marketing! Do more out of the library outreach! Design better banners! Bring in a cafe!” “Circulate iPods!” and then would freak when it all still failed to stop patrons calling their offices and complaining.
I think the same thing has happened to taxonomy and taxonomists--sell it and its tools as capable of doing it all, then disappoint everyone when it doesn’t.
- Keith DeWeese
Maybe we need t-shirts that say, “I brought a dead taxonomist back to life--ask me how!”
- Patrick Lambe
Yes I think you’re right about why there is such a sense of insecurity, the practice is poorly understood and appreciated which is precisely why the CMSWatch representation (whether intentional or careless) needs to be challenged. But I don’t see how a debate among ourselves about what we should call ourselves instead helps that cause… it probably hinders it - unless it’s just a bit of light relief. Confidence, trust and buy-in (which is what we often need to get) doesn’t come from a label. It comes from our performance, and we’re just unfortunate that it takes a long time, considerable skill and patience and a lot of constancy to gain that in our profession.
- Theresa Regli
“You then present the word taxonomy ONLY in terms of a popular and inaccurate misconception of it“
Is a standard hierarchical taxonomy an “inaccurate” representation of what a taxonomy might be? I used that representation of it on purpose – because that is what’s dying.
“in fact the misconception that results in so many bad taxonomies”
How do you define a “bad” taxonomy? When it’s non-comprehensive / doesn’t include all the possibilities of categorization within a domain? This happens more and more these days, because in many situations, there’s simply too much content for a human being to create a comprehensive taxonomy. And these days, where enterprises have millions or even hundreds of millions of documents, that’s quite common.
“and present other aspects of professional taxonomy work (eg facets, which BTW are in themselves also often presented as single hierarchies) as if they were solely the domain of metadata.”
Well, it is the domain of metadata. All of it is metadata. Or are we now going to have a debate about what metadata is? Taxonomies (even multi-faceted ones) are an increasingly passé way of capturing and expressing metadata. I don’t necessarily agree that’s a good thing – on the contrary – but social software, free tagging, and folksonomies are making it so, and there’s nothing we (present and former) taxonomists can do about it. Power to the people, as they say….
“This is misleading, and feeds off a popular misconception to make what looks like a cheap shot in favour of metadata work at the expense of taxonomy work.”
By your definition, what is the difference between taxonomy work and metadata work? I believe occasionally metadata work will require a taxonomy. But that need is occurring less and less, because it’s being supplanted by (again) text mining technology, social tagging, and software that can in fact derive controlled vocabularies based on analysis of the content as well as how groups tag it.
“Since from your reply this is clearly not out of ignorance, I have to assume it is out of mischief, and this needs to be called.”
Oh, there’s a lot between ignorance and mischief. Let’s remember, this is a prediction – it doesn’t mean it’s the case right now. It stemmed from this:
http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1178-La-taxonomie-est-morte!--Vive-la-taxonomie...
I think that pretty much says it all, and perhaps clarifies why I phrased it as I did?
“But taking a cheap shot based on a popular misconception is not a legitimate challenge in my book. I said “shame on you CMSWatch” because I respect and admire your (collective and individual) work, which I regard as one oriented towards education and awareness, not this kind of populist stunt.”
Fairly put, but I assure you it was not meant as a “stunt”. One of the words we often use to describe what we do is “hard-hitting analysis” – and that’s the case with this prediction. It’s meant to be a brutal wake-up call to the whole domain of taxonomy creation, maintenance, etc. – because taxonomists could very well be rendered obsolete by software in the relatively near future. Google already proports that taxonomies are obsolete and unnecessary. Search tools do an increasingly better job at creating faceted navigation from structured and semi-structured content – and they’re all dumping tons of R&D into doing the same with unstructured content. Where does that leave the taxonomist? Approving or tweaking what the software does?
“Definitions compete and evolve across the space, not just in taxonomy work.”
Taxonomies are a law for categorizing information. That’s how I’ve defined it since I taught my first taxonomy course about 13 years ago (drawn straight from the Greek etymology of the word taxo=category, nomos=law). It’s quite simple to come up with controlled categorization laws in contained domains where few have input and where you can set a categorical and vocabulary standard. It’s the same reason why languages remain intact and unchanged when they’re contained to a very specific geographical area (Islandic, Welsh, Basque, Alsatian, are good examples). But the paradigm of the social internet will kill that, I believe, which is why you say “boot” and I say “trunk” when we’re talking about the back of a car. The more people get involved and the more things spread out, the less you can control how it’s perceived and what it’s called and how it’s categorized. That’s just nature.
And in specialized domains, software will soon be better at categorization than people will (as collective knowledge and information can be referenced across different domains, context can be better determined, etc.)
“You seem to be asking for a more respectful and collegial approach and I’m happy to accede to that - but your original prediction was not framed respectfully or collegially, and so you should expect that to be called out in the strongest possible terms.”
I simply ask to be challenged free of personal insult, and I don’t believe my original prediction was lacking respect. If you say to me, “women, more often than not, earn less than men for doing the same job” it is a fact, not a personal insult to me as a woman. When I say taxonomies are dead, it’s not an insult to taxonomists – it’s to point out that more people and technology buyers are letting the masses of taggers, auto-tagging applications, and search software out there do the (traditional) taxonomist’s job, and the result it not the comforting, hierarchical, cross-referenced or multi-faceted taxonomy we all know and love. It’s just a big pile of searchable metadata, and it works just fine—because people can use it any way they want.
And that is a fact, free of mischief, for all taxonomists to consider.
- Patrick Lambe
This is getting into nit-picking Theresa, you know as well as I do if you’ve worked in the taxonomy space that a “bad” taxonomy is one that fails to serve its purpose and in most organisational contexts that’s about support for information sharing and use. You also know that the very limited understanding of a taxonomy as a single hierarchy poses problems for taxonomists in buy-in, adoption, and user education - or you should know. It also poses a barrier, by the way, for an appreciation of how metadata can be leveraged.
You assume that metadata supercedes taxonomy work, but I would argue that (a) taxonomy work is a necessary foundation for productive and useful metadata and (b) that not all taxonomy work results in - or is actioned by - metadata. I agree that a lot more of it should be, but there will always be organisation tasks that do not need metadata in the IT sense. My book has several examples of this, including a slightly more flexible definition of taxonomies and taxonomy work than the one you have adopted.
The balance between control and freedom and the criteria for where you want to be on the continuum between those two poles are also spelled out in the book - there is no one size fits all approach here.
Your March 2008 post about taxonomies (I blogged it appreciatively) is actually inconsistent with your later prediction because you said then that taxonomies are still needed, and spelt out some very good reasons why. Google, by the way, is not a credible authority to cite on the value of taxonomies, they have a very strong vested commercial interest in the argument that taxonomies have no value. Many information and knowledge environments are not susceptible to the methods that Google uses to magnificent affect on the scale of large populations of people using very large populations of content and very diverse purposes - also discussed in my book. Frankly much of the propaganda from search companies that talks about the lack of any need for structured taxonomy work - more from their sales and marketing people than from their technical folks - is misleading and irresponsible, I say this having had to pick up the pieces of implementations that fail to achieve objectives because of the lack of taxonomy work behind the scenes.
I’m not sure where you got the personal insult side of things from, where my language was strong was in describing behaviours and statements not people - in particular what looked like deliberately narrow representation of what taxonomies are - a misrepresentation in my view.
Now we have both expressed our views of what we think happened, I think we still largely disagree and that’s ok, we don’t have to reach agreement on this. I still think it was an irresponsible post, and you don’t. I don’t think it will be productive to continue in a “you said, I said” tit for tat exchange.
If you really want something to get your teeth into, then I’d be happy to do a debate on whether metadata work really supercedes taxonomy work in the richer not limited sense. I would also be happy to debate related issues - eg the relevance of the taxonomy profession, or the challenges facing taxonomists. In fact, why stop at TaxoCop, why not do it at Taxonomy Bootcamp assuming we both get there this year. Then at least we could also get to have that cup of tea.
If you haven’t read my book, then I would encourage you to do so, since my position on several of the points you make is spelled out there already.
- Theresa Regli
"I’d be happy to do a debate on whether metadata work really supercedes taxonomy work in the richer not limited sense.”
This would indeed be welcomed, as it does seem we disagree on this point more than any other. Personally, I loathe these ceaseless online debates where so much is extrapolated beyond intent (or completely incorrectly), which is what I believe you’re doing with my argument. The prediction is really only a slight (and very slight) modification of what I say in the March 2008 blog post. Note in the prediction I point out: “We still need controlled vocabularies. We still need to tag content.” But you have left this out of any quotations of the prediction, because then it is easier to say that my statements are careless and not thought through.
Regarding your Google rebuttal, as you may know, my colleagues & I are the last group of people you need to tell to not believe vendor hype (we don’t advise vendors or work for them in any way, we only work for buyers and end-users, and part of our mission statement is to debunk vendor hype). I made the statement I did about technology because I spend a lot of time doing end-user interviews, and the fact is a lot of organizations get a lot of value out of search tools, and they greatly enhance information finadability, without anyone ever creating a taxonomy. This is based on real end-user opinion and research, not vendor hype. Could a taxonomy make it even better? Sure, possibly, in many, but not necessarily all situations. Sometimes it’s better content structure that improves it, or some other aspect of content organization. But the difference and improvement that might be made by adding a taxonomy to the mix may not be worth the extra spend.
My principal complaint is that you’re arguing against things I didn’t actually claim, and quoting parts of the prediction without telling the whole story, and that’s better handled and discussed in person (or at least on the phone). As I mentioned, if TBC to too far off or one of us can’t make it this year, one of Seth’s CoP calls would be the best venue.
By the way, I’m still wondering what the definition of “rhetohypical” is.
- Patrick Lambe
In March you raised the question “taxonomie est morte?” and concluded “vive la taxonomie”. In December death was final. I’d say that’s a pretty big change. I can only work with the words you offer Theresa.
Similarly, in your comment reference to Google you reference what Google themselves say about taxonomies and search, and not your own research, which would have not raised the objection I made.
Your final comments about the role that taxonomies can play starts to move towards a more balanced view of how taxonomy work can contribute in the corporate information environment, apparently denied in the December prediction.
Yes, let’s do the Taxonomy Boot Camp debate if you can make it.
Rhetohypical (as you MUST have guessed) is a wordplay on “rhetoric” and “hype”.
- Theresa Regli
I really think half the reason we are debating this issue is that your definition of taxonomy is far more wide-reaching and general than mine. I haven’t read your book, and surely you haven’t read or attended any of the courses I’ve developed on content modeling (of which I consider taxonomy development a very small and increasingly less relevant part of).
Considering last year’s taxonomy boot camp began with an evening session of 40 or so taxonomists disagreeing as to what a taxonomy really is (or at least how it can be defined—it all started when Wendi Pohs put up her definition of it), I believe this point is perhaps at the core of what we’re disagreeing about. We’ll have to agree what we’re debating the death (or non-death) of, before we start the debate.
I don’t believe that taxonomy = metadata, controlled vocabularies, content models, data models, content structures, navigation, faceted navigation, or many other things that people (including MANY taxonomists I have spoken with over the years) believe that it is. But if a room of taxonomists can’t agree on a definition, why would we expect everyone else to be clear on what a taxonomy really is?
The words I have offered on taxonomy over the past decade are hardly limited to these two little posts. If you request that I read your book, you might consider reading my wider body of work as well, as I’d hate you to think I’m claiming fruit is dead when what I’m really talking about is just kumquats.
http://www.aiim.org/Education/Information-Organization-Access-Search-Training-Courses.aspx
(Click ‘course description’ )
There’s a lot more out there, too, but my point is that we need to be on the same page about what we’re debating the death of, first.
- Theresa Regli
That wink shouldn’t be there....I hate when punctuation is assumed to be an emoticon....
- Patrick Lambe
I’ve removed your “winky” for you - it’s a quirk of expression engine which we use to run our site.
Yes, happy to read whatever you can point my way. The course looks excellent if rather compressed for only four days. Do you have any articles that would help me understand in greater depth how you define taxonomies and their role?
And yes, we should establish the common ground on which we’re debating before we go into it. I’m also happy - if it turns out that this is a mismatch of definitions, to turn it into a dialogue rather than a debate, dialogues are better for learning, but debates challenge thinking more and tend to be more entertaining for the audience. We can agree that closer to the date, assuming you’re going to make it.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (<strong>, <em>, <a>) Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. URLs are automatically converted into links.
Patrick, I appreciate your comments—please allow me to continue the debate, if you’re willing to banter with one so “flippant, ignorant, and silly”. It’s nice to meet you, too. As I worked as a taxonomist for 10+ years, it’s a shame we never met and shared a civilized cup of tea.
You write:
“The assumption (only held among those deeply ignorant of post 19th century taxonomy practice – shame on you CMS Watch you should know better) that taxonomies are purely defined by single hierarchy structures”
Where, pray tell, did I say that? Shame on your for extrapolating something I didn’t actually say.
What I said was:
“I will assert that the days of the traditional, definitive, and single-hierarchy taxonomy are long behind us...”
...which means the days of that *particular* type of taxonomy are behind us. I never say that’s the only type of taxonomy.
Much like the presentation I gave to kick off Taxonomy Boot Camp this year, I wrote this so that there *would* be a flurry of self-examination among taxonomists, who still can’t agree on / define what a taxonomy really is (anyone who was at Taxonomy Boot Camp this past year can’t deny it).
“Taxonomists, deep down, desperately want to be accepted by the rest of humanity”— in that case, work harder to understand technology and how it works (or doesn’t work) with the structures you design.
“such a flippant and poorly-reasoned piece of flim-flam could get us in such a tizzy about what to call ourselves.”
The horror! To be challenged and questioned! Funny, your flippant and falsely extrapolated comments about what I wrote don’t get me in a tizzy. Perhaps because I believe being challenged is a good thing. Because I challenge taxonomists, they have an identity crisis? Seems like a lack of confidence.
“Rhetohypical”—is that a word? I have a degree in linguistics, and hmmm—this word seems completely made up. I’m curious as to the etymology?
Your profession is my profession too. Let’s make it more open to being challenged, and not false assumptions.
Posted on January 12, 2009 at 10:00 PM | Comment permalink