Messageboard Topic Tagging: User Tagging of Collectively Owned Community Content

Abstract
We have designed a feature for the BBC England messageboard which allows users to tag their own conversations with words and phrases. This introduces a faceted method of navigation around conversations to complement the current structure. The messageboards' editorially imposed topdown architecture is inflexible and does not consistently reflect the content: users can't easily work out ‘where the party’s at’.

This "ethnoclassification" follows many of the same rules as Flickr (photo collections) and del.icio.us (web link collections), where they have been implemented very successfully. However, their content items are owned by individuals, whereas our conversations and therefore the tags attached are owned by a group.

This difference could create community politics, and we await our launch to see what behaviours and etiquettes emerge. We hope to see more ‘informational’ than ‘personal’ tagging, but expect a certain level of ‘metadebate’. We should have some results in time for DUX’05.

Keywords
Interaction design, ethnoclassification, tagging, community, metadata, taxonomy, folksonomy.

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First presented at the conference on Designing for User eXperience, November 3-5, 2005, San Francisco, CA