Tempting to Tag : An Experimental Comparison of Four Tagging Input Mechanisms

摘要

Tagging helps achieve improved indexing and recommendation of resources(e.g., videos or pictures) in large data collections. In order to reap the benefits oftagging, people must be persuaded to label the resources they consume. This paperreports on a study in which four different tagging input mechanisms and their effect onusers’ motivation to tag were compared. The mechanisms consisted of a standard taginput box, a chatbot-like environment, a bookmarking mechanism, and a “tag and vote”game. The results of our experiment show that the use of the nonstandard tagging inputmechanisms does not affect users’ motivation to tag. In some instances taggingmechanisms were found to distract users from their primary task: consuming resources.Persuading people to tag might be accomplished more effectively by using othermotivating tagging mechanisms (e.g., tagging games), or motivation could be created byexplaining the usefulness of tagging.