Folksonomological Reification

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Folksonomological ReificationPatrick Parslow, Karsten ster Lundqvist, Edwin Porter-Daniels, RichardHussey, Shirley Williams

University of Reading


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AbstractThe gap between formal ontologies and folksonomies is identified, and termed theOntology-Folksonomy Divide. This is explored through the application ofsociological and psychological models of identity, which are examined and applied tothe phenomena of online social networking, using a specially developed analysisframework based on activity theory. Descriptions of roles present in onlinecommunities and how they relate to an individuals digital identity are explored and ataxonomy of roles is proposed. The methods, technologies, and theory lead to theidea of Folksonomological Reification.


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Introduction: Why Folksonomological Reification?

The positive development of a society in the absence of creative, independently thinking,critical individuals is as inconceivable as the development of an individual in the absence ofthe stimulus of the community Albert Einstein.

There exists an inherent divide between the Web2.0 community and the knowledgerepresentation / Semantic Web community. There are a large number of Internet services andtools, collectively termed Web2.0, that empower individuals to use their creative powerswhich, as a consequence, builds up a community knowledge base. This form of communalknowledge base, created by the individual actions of many people is termed a folksonomy.There is also a formalised approach to knowledge representation, called ontology, which can

be utilised by computers in intelligent comparisons and inferences. This latter option is

problematic due to the difficulty of developing ontologies. This is particularly true inscenarios where many people are involved, and thus this method is being under-utilised.

It would be both interesting and beneficial if these two approaches could be connected, sothat the semantics that are created in folksonomies could be utilised in computationalsemantic tools. This kind of technology does not yet exist, and this is why we have coinedthe Ontology-Folksonomy Divide (Figure 1) to explain this lack of interoperability. Thischapter explores the issues with pursuing this line of enquiry, and investigate the roles andidentities which individuals can take when doing so.

Figure 1 Ontology-Folksonomy Divide


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Ontologies and FolksonomiesOntologyOntology has multiple definitions relating to different domains, although they are related.It is the study of being , but it is also used in a more technical regard as being the study ofthings and their relationships, and it is also used as a noun to mean a formal specification of adomain (Figure 2). As a noun it defines and specifies the different classes of individuals thatform the domain, the actual individuals and the properties (relationships) of the individuals(Horridge, et al., 2004)

Figure 2 Ontology

One of the benefits of developing an ontology is that multiple applications can consistentlyuse the same domain to perform different automated tasks, including tasks that involvereasoning based on the different relationships that are specified. Ontologies are rigidspecifications, i.e. relationships either exist or do not exist, and there is no space for fuzzinessor probabilities. The binary nature of ontologies is more technically described by Horrocksas the crispness of ontologies (Stoilos, et al., 2005), and can lead to issues when attemptingto utilise their properties on a larger scale, as the users need to agree upon commonontologies. This has proved to be difficult, as most domains have experts and usersdisagreeing about some of the properties inherent in the domain.

Fuzzy ontologies (Figure 3) have been proposed in the past (Lee, et al., 2005) (Parry, 2004)as a method to reduce the crispness of ontologies, and though they introduce degrees of trustin the different component parts of the knowledge base they are still only representing theknowledge from one viewpoint.

Figure 3 Fuzzy Ontology


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Web2.0 OntologiesThe nature of Web2.0 is fragmented and rapidly changing with an immense number ofservices and tools. Many of these tools internally utilise ontologies despite the fact that thereare no optimal tools to semantically unite the disparate areas. From this viewpoint the termWeb 2.0 Ontologies is not adequately defined, and thus does not lend itself well to thenormal definition of the traditional ontology. It is therefore helpful to examine the nature offolksonomies, which are very much a part of the Web2.0 phenomenon and which provideaccess to some of the semantic features of ontologies whilst also inherently providing aninterpretation of the fuzziness involved when many people share their own experiences.Thus, it should be possible to explore what is necessary to bridge the Ontology-FolksonomyDivide the division between folksonomies and ontologies.

FolksonomiesFolksonomies are descriptions or representations of domains, with emphasis on relationships

made by individuals in the domain, gathered though processes performed by many people(Vander Wal, 2005) (Smith, 2008), such as interacting with social software. Therefore,folksonomies offer a certain ranking or fuzziness of how, for example, a tag is related to aweb page. Unfortunately at present this folksonomy representation is only available tohumans, e.g. as a view in a tag cloud or by manually searching through the knowledge baseof the folksonomy to find interesting relationships.

Social SoftwareThe term social software can be used to cover a wide range of software tools that enableinteraction between people (Boyd, 2003) and we describe two forms of socially-enabledsoftware, which, whilst far from being mutually exclusive, illustrate two types of service,which support the emergence of folksonomies, i.e. social networking and social

bookmarking. Marlow (Marlow, et al., 2006) gives a more detailed taxonomy of socialtagging systems.

Social networking sites are web-based tools facilitating social interaction. Whilst thefacilities they provide vary, common core components are a profile page, the concept offriends to whom the user has some form of online (and in some cases offline) links, andsome method of making comments on material, whether it is internal or external to the site.Comments can have varying levels of privacy, taking the form of private communication

between two individuals, one to many communications and many to many.

Social bookmarking sites allow the users to post links to material they have discovered onthe web, and label the post with a combination of single word descriptions, or short phrases,known as tags. Some bookmarking sites allow for a comment as well as a set of tags (e.g.Clipmarks http://clipmarks.com/ and flickr http://flickr.com/).

Whilst the tag is inherently less expressive than the comment available on social networkingsites, the simplicity of the relationship between a single short descriptor and the resource withwhich it is associated provides a rich source of information when taken in conjunction withthe tags provided by the other members of the community, and the tagging behaviours ofthose individuals.


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The comment is amenable to similar treatment. Comments are typically written in somethingakin to normal language (differing through use of various online dialects) and interestingwords can be automatically extracted by ignoring the filler words. Filler words currentlyhave to be pre-defined, typically including conjunctives and pronouns, but once this is donethe remaining set of words can be used as though they were tags. Whilst this undoubtedly

loses some of the original meaning of the comment (by reducing it to a set of unordered keywords), many of the semantic relationships between words and resource are maintained.

The knowledge accumulated by several folksonomies based on the activities of singleindividuals could be represented using an ontology. By combining these ontologies,algorithms could be designed to navigate the total knowledge space of all the users (Figure4). However, when using this approach, representation of the fuzziness of the knowledge onthe individual level would still not be possible. Some shared knowledge could potentiallyremain as separated knowledge due to the fact that disparate ontologies might useincompatible phrases and identifiers for it. This kind of system would also be prone toretaining redundant information.

Figure 4 Folksonomy represented by many ontologies

Alternatively, the body of knowledge could be stored in a crisp ontology that would describeeverything, even diverging knowledge, thus making it searchable and consistent acrossdifferent views of the domain. The knowledge would then be connected to different

individuals by reifications in a folksonomic layer (Figure 5). This approach would allowdiversity and make it possible to study emergent behaviours in the body of knowledge.


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meanings associated with them can be a reflection of the community who produce it Theworld wont stay miscellaneous because we are together making it ours (Weinberger, 2007).

Studying the way individuals work independently, for their own reasons and to their ownends, but collaboratively by dint of the tools they choose to use, may give further insight into

social identity theory and psychology.

Activity Theory

In traditional Activity Theory, as expanded by Engestrm (Engestrm, 1999), the activitysystem is viewed as comprising six parts, which are often represented by the activity triangle(Figure 6):

Figure 6 The traditional Activity Theory triangular relationship mode

Whilst exploring different methods and theories to use in helping analyse social software, itwas felt that the underlying dynamic nature of Activity Theory well suited the interactions

between people, community, and tools found in the domain. A modified view of the ActivityTheory relationship brings out the key relationships in the interactions between communityand tools.

Taking the multiple identity/multiple role aspects of the individual/community outlinedabove, and considering the Rules and Division of Labour of activity theory as defining the(formal and semi-formal) group Roles, the diagram can be simplified (Figure 7) for use inanalysing the types of social communities, behaviours and tools which are the subject ofstudy.

The possible multiplicity of individual goals which make up the Object are grouped with thecommunal objectives. In this case, recognising the folksonomy as a dynamic tool, createdand used by the members of the community, we place Tools at the centre of the diagram.

In terms of the communities that form around social networks and social utilities, there would be no community without the tools, which is why there is no link in the model directly joining the individual Subjects with the Community.

It is recognised that the framework may be useful in other scenarios, however, such as to helpa Technology Steward analyse a potential technology for use by a community of practice. Inthese cases, the Object and the Community become more central, and a key concern is how toselect the appropriate tools to provide a close linkage between the individuals goals and thecommunitys objectives.


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Figure 7 Revised Relationship model for Social Networking tools and Activities

Individuals and Communities

The nature of the wisdom of the crowdFolksonomology is the study of the formation of rules by the wisdom of the crowd(Surowiecki, 2004). This can enable the practitioner to gain insights into the meanings the

folk (individuals acting separately) attach to things, and also allow for a view to be gained ofthe way they reach their agreements, and of the roles they play within the group. As theWeb2.0 technologies become more endemic, and ease of many-to-many communicationincreases, the user will tend to become more of a prosumer, producing and consuming(web) content. Users of social bookmarking, mashup and social network sites already fallinto this category, creating content for their own purposes which can then be consumed, re-

purposed and re-published by others.

One should not underestimate the wisdom of the crowd effect nor regard it as being a newlyrecognised phenomenon. Galton (Galton, 1907) demonstrated that whilst the median valuefrom a set of estimates by many people of the weight of a bull was within 1% of the truevalue, the distribution of estimates did not fit a normal distribution. In his analysis, hesuggests that the observers were minimising some types of error, and maximising others. Ofcourse, because the data from which he worked was produced as part of a 'guess the weight'competition, the estimates were likely to be independent, and that is not a feature of the typeof data produced by communal bookmarking or other social networking enterprises. Here,the individuals who make decisions on which word to use as a tag for a piece of content haveaccess to the existing corpus, although they may not all make use of it and consequently therewould not be an expectation of a normal distribution.


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Roles in communities supporting the wisdom of the crowd effectA taxonomy for discussion about roles in community is needed. Some of the proposed namesfor roles, with brief descriptions, serve to motivate the later discussion.

Users who bookmark content for their own use will tend to use tags that mean something tothemselves ( Bookmarker ). This behaviour is probably the most similar to the 'guess theweight' competition, and relies on the individual acting in their own self-interest. However,users sometimes tag in order to heighten awareness ( Explorer ) of content for other people.Sometimes this is in order to raise the profile of the material they have posted, and sometimesit is to bring the attention of a group to something which they think might, or should, be ofinterest to them. In these cases, the tagger can make use of tags which are pre-agreed withtheir community, or which may be found easily by others. These two cases are likely togenerate either very specific tags (often comprising of amalgams of words and numbers),combinations of tags, or very generic ones. A third role the posting individual may take isthat of an Editor - deliberately adding tags to content which seem to be appropriate butwhich are missing from the existing corpus. Fourthly, a Translator may add tags inlanguages other than the original, additionally there may be some disruptive individuals who' poison ' the system by adding inappropriate tags.

These behaviour patterns are not necessarily easy to detect, but may have a significant impacton the collections of tags which are applied to content. The ability to see the existing set oftags for an item may also tend to make most users select from existing tags, especially wherethe system helpfully suggests commonly used ones. Whilst this may contribute to a morecoherent body of tag-content pairings it may, in fact, have a detrimental effect on the value ofthe tagging exercise. The individual may accept a tag suggestion despite it not being theword they might have used if left to their own devices. The community may end up with a

narrower focus in the tag cloud, which may not express the richness of the contentadequately. The strongest 'defence' against the suggested tag is to foster the Editor role inusers - people who will examine the existing tag set and expand it to include less obvious butstill relevant tags.

People, Roles and Digital IdentityThere are different roles people can undertake when they engage in social bookmarking. In'full-blown' social networking there are even more roles varying in terms of formality andcomplexity. These roles are not yet well defined, and the reader may well be able to identifymany others or hold the nomenclature in dispute. The names, and indeed descriptions, arethere to stimulate discussion - the 'final definitions' will come about as a folksonomy.

Identity is meaning; Multi-faceted individuals and social identity Taking the Identity Theory (Stryker, et al., 2000) view that identity is a reference to a part ofa self, composed of the meanings that persons attach to the multiple roles they typically playin highly differentiated contemporary societies (Stryker, et al., 2000) we see that the roleswe adopt form a large part of our concept of self, and that, as in the common parlance, theygive meaning to our place in the group.

These roles are reflections of elements of self which can be thought of as strands of identity.These strands can all co-exist within the individual, although only one is consciously active at


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a time. Roles relating to family life, work, being a customer or a seller form the socialidentity of the individual. Those roles that are applicable to the individuals digitalenvironment form a digital social identity for that individual. This is the identity of theindividual as viewed from the perspective of others in the digital environment, rather than theindividuals own view of their identity. But in many ways, it is these views which go to

forming the individual's identity, as it is these views which will determine the socialinteractions of the individual. Merchant gives a good analysis of issues relating to identityand online social networking (Merchant, 2006).

Through our interactions with others in social networks, whether online or offline, we createmeaning by classifying and labelling resources. These resources can be of any type,including people. Whilst doing so we occupy different roles, presenting different strands ofourselves, different identities , to the community in which we are involved. The meaning ofthese identities to other members of the group goes towards establishing their views of ouridentity, and the meaning we attach to the identities we present forms our view of our self.But these meanings are themselves informed by the views of our identity expressed by othermembers of the group, whether explicitly or implicitly. This is strongly reminiscent ofSymbolic Interactionism (Blumer, 2004), wherein the self is seen as a construct of society.

Clarke describes the digital persona (Clarke, 1993) as the model of an individual which can be produced by the collection and analysis of information about that person. This digital persona is usually considered in terms of the models, which can be built by computer programs, but the concept holds just as well for the model built by human agents who haveaccess to the digital information. This digital persona , then, is the overall model whichcomprises the sum of the digital identities , each representing a strand of the biologicalindividuals personality in terms of the roles they perform in different contexts.

The individual as part of the community Any community consists of norms (which include hierarchical rules of behaviour and cultural

prejudices, amongst many others), a lingo, ideals and shared experience (Van Maanen, et al.,1979) and the social network, and social networking communities (Shirky, 2008) are notsignificantly different (Benkler, 2006).

The lingo is an emergent property, and can be seen to evolve within different sub-cultures ofthe whole, both in online and offline communities. The social norms vary, with some groundrules for behaviour being laid down by the owners or founders of the community. Some of

these are more restrictive than others, and there are occasions when they need to be re-stated.Enforcement is often through peer pressure, but can also be referred upwards, often by theuse of the 'report abuse' or 'flag as inappropriate' features in online scenarios. These normsallow for a shared communal experience, by providing individuals with both implicit andexplicit standards and thus facilitating harmonious interaction.

Shared experience is an interesting issue - in common with real-world social networks andcommunities people move from one online community to another. When they join acommunity, they, perforce, do not share the same set of experience of that community as thelong-standing members. In the 'old days' of Internet forums and newsgroups it was generallyrecommended to 'lurk' i.e. read posts, but not contribute until you were familiar with theway the group operated. This seems less prevalent in the more modern social networks,where the emphasis is on sharing your own previous experience by asserting your personality


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on your profile, blog or any other publishing medium available to you. This is made possible because the mode of use is different - in the social network, everyone gets to decide theagenda and express it in their own ways, whereas the newsgroups and forums wereestablished for a specific topic (or range of topics). In a way, the forum specified the tag andthe norms of the community enforced (to a greater or lesser degree) the adherence of content

to that tag.

This highlights another use of the tag; tagged content can be formatted in the form of adiscussion thread. Google mail, for instance, allows the user to do just this, and to view thecontent filtered by the tags they have chosen to apply to the contents of their mailbox. Astagging becomes more widespread, it is possible to use the tags to follow a topic, just as onewould have done on the forums and newsgroups, but from a widely distributed set of sources- and this facilitates each user in becoming more of a prosumer. They can produce whatevercontent they like, and tag it with words that they think are relevant to it. If it is discovered byothers, it can be bookmarked and re-tagged with the terms that the explorers who found itthink represent it best - and then reviewers can use it as the basis for their own prcis, whichin turn can be discovered by others. Instead of having to focus on a specific narrow role

because of the topic attached to the technology being used, the individual is now able tofollow their line of thought and allow the vox populi to determine the merit of theircontribution.


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Discussion

Roles

Figure 8 Illustrating the relationship of roles and identities

It is useful in discussion to expand upon the taxonomy of terms described earlier, which can

then be used to analyse and discuss the roles which are adopted in communities.

People adopt different roles or positions (Davies, et al., 1990), with attendant behaviours, tosuit the context of the environment they are in (Figure 8). In terms of a social network site,for example, several roles can be identified. There are Explorers , who find content which isoutside the local network, and post links to it, for their community to see. Then there areWriters who write their own content, a subset of whom are Diarists . Bridging the gap

between the Explorers and Writers are the Reviewers , who take existing content and provide analysis of it, to greater or lesser degree. Any role can be in a specific domain, suchas an Academic Explorer , who explores issues relating to their field of academic study, or aNews Explorer who explores the recent news articles, providing an index for their

community.


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There are also Socialites , who add content in the context of conversations with othermembers of the community, and Readers who dont add content, but consume it. Withsystems which allow for tagging, there is also a Classifier role, of people who dedicate timeto producing meaningful and consistent tags for content. The Ambassador makesconnections between multiple services, posting content from one to communities which

might find it interesting. Of course, there are also the Troll , and the Flamer , both inheritedfrom usenet communities, and many other roles, and any individual may take on any of theseroles at any time within any community.

Roles within a community can be composites of several basic role types. Important to onlinecommunities in particular, the Technology Steward role (Wenger, et al., 2006) (Wenger,1998) is to select and configure technology, and provide support for it, within a community,for the benefit of the community , not just because the technology is neat. This rolecomprises multiple separate strands, such as the Explorer (in finding new technologieswhich may support the community), the Reviewer (in analysing the suitability of the

technology for the way the group works), a Leader (in driving adoption of technologieswhich will provide benefit, and gaining consensus to avoid technologies which will not) andMentor (providing support for the group members as they get to grips with the technology inthe context of the group).

Also of interest, particularly in communities of practice, the role of Ethnographer , suggested by Smith (Smith, 2007), takes on the task of examining how the technology is used (or not)within the context of the group. This role is effectively a Reviewer , but instead of observingthe content produced by the community, they observe the practices and tools and reviewthem. The Ethnographer is in a good position to observe the way the tools change throughuse. In terms of communities supported by folksonomical tools, these changes can happen in

two ways. Modifications can be made to the design of the actual tool (software) whichsupports the folksonomies which allow the community to express their implicit ontologies.But, more importantly, the folksonomies are tools which the community use, and these arehighly dynamic in nature. A folksonomy is not being used as a tool unless it is changing.This realisation brings us to look at the nature of folksonomies through the perspectives oftrust networks and Activity Theory.

Activities modify trustLet us consider Amanda and her social network, S (Figure 9). The members of S have theirown experience-based opinions of Amanda, based on the content she chooses to share withthem and the communication they have with her based, in fact, on the roles she adoptswithin the group. As part of their interaction with Amanda and with each other, they makeimplicit and explicit statements about her, or rather, about her as she is reflected in her roles.

Additionally, every member of a network has a model of how much trust they invest in theothers in the group in relation to their roles. This trust is essentially their measure of whetherthe opinions expressed by an individual match up with their own experience, but extends tocover concepts such as the reliability of community members to do what they havecommitted to, and the level of reasonableness in placing expectations upon an individual to

be able to rise to a particular challenge.

Even something as simple as Bob re-sharing a link Amanda has posted so that those membersof Bobs social network, T, who arent in S can see it, provides a positive affirmation of


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Amanda in her role as an explorer. Now there are two cases here. In one, Bob (or thetechnology he uses) does not attribute the material he shares to Amanda (Figure 9).Consequently, although the shared network S can be aware of the relationship, those in Tcannot know that Bob is exploiting his relationship with Amanda. However, if Bob makes itclear that he has re-posted something Amanda drew his attention to (Figure 10), those in both

networks will be aware of the relationship between the Bob and Amanda.

In the former case, only those people who are in both Amanda and Bobs social networks will benefit from the expression of trust Bob has made in Amandas explorer role. In the lattercase, however, anyone who can see Bobs re-post can learn something about the relationship

between Bob and Amandas roles within the social network. Also, in the former case, withno attribution, there is the potential for a negative effect on network Ss level of trust in Bob

because he does not provide credit, but members of T may gain a false impression of Bobsexploratory abilities. In the latter case, Bob may not benefit from gaining credit atAmandas expense, but both benefit appropriately from the actual exchange which has taken

place.

Figure 9 Amanda and Bob in the Explorer role, no atrribution by Bob

Figure 10 Amanda and Bob in the Explorer role, with attribution by Bob

The impact of Bobs decision to re-share the resource Amanda had discovered dependslargely on three things:


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1. Whether Bobs re-sharing attributes his source, Amanda

2. The size of T

3. The overlap between S and T, S T

One might think that the level of interest T have in the original resource should be consideredas an important factor. However, it probably does not make much of a difference to the levelof experience gained by the members of T because, even if they find no interest in the itemitself, they learn that Bob sometimes posts things they find dull. If Bob has attributed his

post, they can also pick up that Bob sometimes re-posts things which Amanda posted, even ifthey are dull. If they notice this, they probably start to draw their own conclusions.

Its not what you knowIf Bob attributes Amanda for the discovery, T all have the opportunity to learn more aboutthe relationship as well as the source information. This allows them to learn about not onlythe actual subject matter of the original resource, but about Amandas interests, about Bobsinterests and about Bobs interest in Amandas interests. If they need to know somethinglater about the topic of the original resource, they now have two more contacts they can useto try to discover more, either in an active dialogue, by asking for advice, or a passiveenquiry, by looking at Amanda or Bobs published material.

On the other hand, if Bob does not attribute Amanda, the majority of T only get to learn ofthe resource, and of Bobs interest in it, and learn nothing of Amanda. If they find theresource dull, this backfires on Bob, and even if they find it interesting, Bob actually loses

out because whilst his network might credit him with the find, they are unable to expand theircommunal knowledge as quickly as they would otherwise. Only the members of S T havethe potential to benefit as much as possible from Bobs act of sharing.

An additional benefit of attributing in this context is that the act of attribution increases thelevel of trust T have in Bob, at least to some extent. If he posts without attribution, it may bethat he has discovered it himself, or that he is passing on someone elses find when heattributes the find to someone else, however, there is a tendency to trust

The original information more after all, it has been recommended by two or more people already

Bobs behaviour in his explorer role, in that if he attributes Amanda, he is likely to attributeme if I post something he wants to share

Of course, the network, T is comprised of many individuals, each with their own roles, andtheir own perspectives of the activity within the network (and indeed, outside it). Theactivity within the network forms a common environment for its members, but notnecessarily a common experience. Attention may be directed elsewhere for any number ofreasons, but more importantly each member of the network is actually at the centre of theirown social network. The network T only exists because Bob is there, at its centre. The

connections made by others within T are extremely unlikely to comprise exactly the sameones as those which constitute T itself. There are two cases where T 1 and T 2 become likely to


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be the same when they are very small, or very close to universal, and in neither case arethey useful. When a network is very small, it provides little or no opportunity for synergy toform, and when it is very large it not only suffers from information overload, but also from alack of classification.

Trust in ontologiesOne problem is that, as mentioned earlier, the ontology does not directly support the fuzzynature of trust. This is more the area of belief networks, where inference is done on a

probabilistic basis. Most folksonomical tools, those which support the emergence offolksonomies, only directly support a very binary view either this resource is tagged withrabbit or it is not, either Manu likes seeing the content Gwen tags, or Manu does not. Thesame is true in social networking sites either Louise is Manus friend, or not. The finegrain of being able to say This is 90% likely to be a picture of a rabbit and I like to followthe content relating to fluffy mammals posted by Gwen, but not the content related toshotguns alongside the ability to set rules for friendship Geoff is my drinking buddy andcan see anything I post, whereas Randolph is my dad, and can see anything I post which isnot tagged socialising tends to be missing in current systems.

Parallels with folksonomiesIn folksonomology we are concerned primarily with the emergence of semantics from social

behaviours with reference to resources and relationships. However, we can see a close parallel with the emergence of the semantics of the individual. The roles an individualoccupies within a community give the individual meaning, in other words, the digitalidentities are the meaning of the digital persona in their own specific contexts.

Figure 11 Meaning comes from implicit behavioural relationships as well as explicit acts of creatingrelationships

ResourcesPeo le

Tags

Meaning

toapplyinfer

From

Relates to


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Consensual RealityWhen we need to communicate about something with someone else, we have to have someshared ground. This is the consensual reality that is formed through negotiating about oursubjective realities through normal social discourse and through formal interactions. It is themeaning we extract from the relationships we observe, after we have checked with others thatour view of the meaning is sufficiently similar to theirs. Consensual reality is the (oftenimplicit) ontology produced through multi-agent collaboration the folksonomy.

The meaning of a symbol, then, is formed subjectively based on our own past experiences,and is an entirely subjective affair, but we try to ensure that it is usable within a social context

by iteratively negotiating with the community. This only occurs if we, in conjunction withothers, have sufficient interest to negotiate, and consequently the meanings of symbols whichare on the periphery of our communal interest will tend to be more vague, whereas thosewhich relate to core concepts will be well defined in that they will have a better consensus.

This carries over to our digital identities. Those roles which are key to the way thecommunity works will have better definition, because they will be the subject of greaterlevels of negotiation. This suggests that an individual with one or more well defined roles ina community will have more connections, but there is also evidence (Pasupathi, 2001) thatthey will also tend to define themselves in terms of the communitys shared experience.Indeed, membership of the community is likely to drive their levels of interest (Thoman, etal., 2007), as ones own level of interest in a subject can be shown to be influenced by theresponsiveness of ones peers when talking about it. In this way, communities have a

positive feedback mechanism which encourages them to focus on particular issues.

From an educational perspective, this gives good motivation to encourage membership of

multiple communities to allow the individual to broaden their range of interests. It is worthexploring further the effects of social network systems on the interests of the users do weinvestigate more areas as a result of membership, perhaps losing the focus on specificconcerns, or does the potential for disinterest on the part of other community members reduceour own levels of interest, until the network becomes little more than a substitute for a TVentertainment channel?


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Conclusion

We have argued that personal identity is best represented as a multi-faceted whole, withindividual strands of identity going to make up the perception of self. Within the context of acommunity, the strands of identity are reflected outwards as the roles the individualundertakes. These roles can be emergent, or can be more or less rigidly defined. In eithercase, the individual will tend to adopt roles which suit them, or for which they perceive thatthey are best suited given the community members available, given the opportunity to do so.

Where roles are emergent, they are described and defined by the folksonomy produced by thecommunity. In more formal systems, they are defined by, or may be described by, anontology. As online social networking becomes more prevalent, the dynamic nature ofcommunity is set to increase, and the Ontology-Folksonomy divide is set to increase. In a

culture where transient ad hoc communities are formed, do their jobs, and are dissolved,formal systems become less applicable as the underlying dynamics become more fluid, andmethods of analysing and supporting folksonomical community support become moreimportant.

Using folksonomies enables the design of automated semantic community role analysis, andallows for the creation of tools to support collaborative working, and communities of

practice. Indeed, the close parallels between the role based model and the model of self builton strands of identity suggest that such tools may also help the individual introspect abouttheir role choices and behaviours. Further work using these models of individual andcommunity can be pursued in building software tools for supporting collaborative working

and learning and in the future, if the psychological aspects of the modelling are well founded,further folksonomological research may even provide a basis for work towards thedevelopment of emergent conscious computing.

In the shorter term, however, further work is needed to explore the Ontology-FolksonomyDivide work on developing tools which can identify roles from behaviours, supportingcollaborative working and learning, and building explicit representations of trust networks

based on the social interactions of communities on the Internet. Developing the role modelwith further examples, analysing social networks in terms of roles, behaviours, contributionsand relationships, and building tools which can support these, are the next steps in a fieldwhere technological practice is often out-pacing academic study.


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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable input from John D. Smith, anonymousreviewers, and that from our team, OdinLab, part of the Ambient and Pervasive Intelligencegroup of the School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading.

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Folksonomological Reification