PurposeThis paper seeks to describe and discuss a tagging experiment involving images related to Israeli and Jewish cultural heritage. The aim of this experiment was to compare freely assigned tags with values (free text) assigned to predefined metadata elements.Design/methodology/approachTwo groups of participants were asked to provide tags for 12 images. The first group of participants was asked to assign descriptive tags to the images without guidance (unstructured tagging), while the second group was asked to provide free‐text values to predefined metadata elements (structured tagging).FindingsThe results show that on the one hand structured tagging provides guidance to the users, but on the other hand different interpretations of the meaning of the elements may worsen the tagging quality instead of improving it. In addition, unstructured tagging allows for a wider range of tags.Research limitations/implicationsThe recommendation is to experiment with a system where the users provide both the tags and the context of these tags.Originality/valueUnstructured tagging has become highly popular on the web, thus it is important to evaluate its merits and shortcomings compared to more conventional methods.
Pluralism and monism are the two current views concerning scientific research and language understanding. Between them there is a third, intermediate, view. We take a "procedural methodology of science" as exemplified in the work of L. Tondl, and "procedural linguistics", as exemplified in the work of B. Harrison, to be representative of this third possibility. Procedures are cognitive, linguistic, and physical processes which, through their hierarchical interconnections can generate fruitful "mechanisms". These "mechanisms" are sensitive to context and operate in heuristic and algorithmic ways. Their similar logical structure points towards a profound unified basis for scientific and linguistic activities, thus providing an interesting bridge between what is achieved by a little child talking to his parents, and a creative scientist struggling to interpret the results of his experiments.
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