Bad, unwanted and disturbing tags

Editor E2 had two ways to define a bad tag. First, she said: “A bad tag is something that confuses more that it benefits.” (E2). Then she added: “A bad tag is everything else but these […] words that describe the text.” (E2). The first one is natural and important, but not very concrete. It leaves the question: Confusion and benefit for whom? Users are diverse. The second definition is just the opposite of a good tag to her, a tag that describes the content of the article. This means that good and clear tag that expresses an opinion about the article, or a wish for information, is still a bad tag.

This is in correspondence with what she said about tag purposes (see chapter 9.3.4).

The editors expressed different opinions about how damaging bad tags are. Editor E1 saw them as noise. This could be a challenge in searching and browsing, but not necessarily. Editors E2 and E3 connected bad tags with confusion and even loss of credibility for both Cancer.dk and the Danish Cancer Society. I also ovserved this diversity among the user test persons. Some found that bad tags gave bad credibility;

others did not see bad tags as a threat at all. This revealed diverse views on tags as a part of a home site.

Editor E1 saw tags that did not describe the content of the article as noise. Examples were misspellings that misguide users and thus lead them to poorer search results because the misspelling may not be present in the articles that are most useful to the user. In general, these tags are a challenge, but not a cathastrophe.

Editor E3 wanted good tags to be clear and short, words that others could easily decode in order to understand its relation to the article. She also ended up excluding opinion tags and wish tags as good tags. She found these types of tags interesting, but they should be a part of a separate feature, dedicated to opinions or content wishes.

Editor E1 gave two examples of tags that users frequently applied to the page with contact information (http://www.cancer.dk/om+os/kontakt/), which she regarded as bad or at least unfortunate. The first example is lotteri (lottery), the other one is adresseendring (change of address). The first tag does clearly not describe the content of the contact information page, and it would be better to apply lottery-related tags to the lottery-related pages. But the other tag was not as clear as an example. Among

many addresses, there was an e-mail address to use if you wanted to give the Danish Cancer Society your new address. Therefore, you were looking for this page! The tag did not describe the complete content of the page, but how to use one of the e-mail addresses. The tag therefore was useful, especially since there were no other pages dedicated to change of address. I do suspect that this editor may have forgotten this part of the page. However, it may indicate that editors prefer topical tags to tags that describe things to do or tags that serve other purposes. They confirmed this when directly asked.

When asked whether there were tags that were both good and bad, the tag terminal (terminal) came up as an example. This word is not uncommon in Danish, but taken from Latin and thus a foreign term. Ediotor E1 said: “If I do not know what it means, and I click on it. And I land on a page about my illness. And I actually did not want to read, because I was not ready […]” E1. Then she concludes that this is a general danger with using Cancer.dk. Even though it is a goal to protect the users, they may stuble on information they did not want at that point. Tags like omgivelsenes reaksjoner (reactions from your surroundings) and arvelighed (inheritability) are examples of the same kind. This is related to a general experience that the editors expressed, that to use Cancer.dk as a patient, you have to acknowledge that you are a patient. This may be a hard and a slow process, and stumbling on unwanted information may be a part of it. Editor E2 mentioned tags that are interesting to some users, and not to others. Her example was tags applied to an article about brain tumors.

If the article has tags with my type of brain tumor, it may be a good. If the tags name other types of brain tumors, they are irrelevant to my need.

For patients and their friends and family, there are risks using Cancer.dk. You may find information that you do not want, or more information than you can absorb in the moment. Editor E2 wanted tags to be a part of the balance, not to give users information they did not want, and not to overwhelm the users. She mentioned the tag cloud as a site that had the possibility of overloading users with links to a large amount of information. Editor E3 did not see this as a problem, but was more concerned about bad tags in the tag cloud, meaning tags that did not lead to articles with the same content as the tag.

9.3.4 PURPOSES WHEN APPLYING TAGS

During the interviewes, I mentioned the purposes for applying tags observed in the tagger study (see chapter 8.3.3), and asked for their opinions. The editors mainly saw the tagging feature as a way for users to supplement the work they did write and structuring articles. This was visible in their view on ideal tags as synonyms that supplement article terminology. It was also visible when they commented on tags that explained something to other users. Ideally, they believed articles should be in a way that made this tag purpose unnecessary.

According to editor E1, a good tag can supplement the content of an article to a certain degree. The suggested tags would cover what was missing in the article. An article about courses of treatment, with a link to an external page about course of treatment for a number of cancer types, had tags with the name of a few of these cancer types.

She suggested to apply the remaining cancer types as tags as well, so that the tags could be lead in terms to both the article and its important links to the external page.

The tags would not describe the content of the article, but the content of the linked article. Editor E1 based this suggestion on the history of the article. When the tagging period started, the article included many links, one for each cancer type with a formal guaranteed course of treatment. When the courses of treatment changed, it was decided to reduce the links to only one. This was easier to maintain. But since the original list of links included information about what cancer types was included in the list of formal guaranteed courses of treatment the article lost this information. As the list was not replaced in the article text, a second choice would be to apply it as tags.

Editor E3 observed many tags that related to small parts of the article. Examples were articles where a drug was mentioned, and then its name turned up as a tag. Articles about new research results attracted tags about what cancer types these results might relate to, wether they were already mentioned in the article or not. To sum up, editors accepted tags as topical descriptors, and included tags that were too specific or even described links, as long as they were topical.

Editor E2 was clear that she did not like opinion tags and tags that express wishes for more information. Such purposes should be in separate features, and Cancer.dk already had a form where you could contact the editors to express your wishes for more information: “So if someone express a lack of information about a specific [cancer] illness, one should not write it as a tag, but express it in some other way.”

(E2). From a users’ point of view, this may not be as easy, and the tagging feature seemed to be en easier channel for some.

Editor E3 suspected that some articles established a culture for what tags users are expected to apply. Her example was tags like Min mor er død (My mother is dead) and Jeg savner min far (I miss my father). If a page has a few of those tags, other users could be encouraged to apply similar tags. This might absolutely be the case.

However, it is also possible that the article text itself attracted such tags. The analysis of tags showed that the share of tags related to the aboutness of the articles varied in different sections of Cancer.dk.

When deleting tags, editor E3 said she primarily guessed that tags that did not describe the content of articles were misplaced searches. The thought of tags as wishes for information, was new to her. Wether this would have incluenced her future tag editing behaviour, is not clear.

Editors wanted tags to be a part of Cancer.dk and blend in as a smooth part of the site.

The important priorities that goes for Cancer.dk, also goes for tags at Cancer.dk. Tags should not disturb users more than necessary, and they should be a part of an efficient tool that support searching and browsing and support the credibility of the site and

thus the Danish Cancer Society. This contradicts another view that the editors shared:

That tags are av voice from the users and by nature do not always blend smoothly in on Cancar.dk

The editors had a clear picture of when they communicated directly with the users, and when they did not. They did not see tags as part of this communication. To them, tags were a part of the strufture of the site, an indexing from the users’ viewpoint.

They preferred to communicate with the users through dedicated forms on Cancer.dk, or e-mail. This distinction is not as clear for all users. Some users saw the tagging feature as a way to communicate, and thus used the feature accordingly.