“Categories are weapons” — sounds like a good title!

I’m glad if my picture is useful for your talk. Even if it turns out to be about Users Who Don’t Get It, or something like that. :-) Really, there’s a lot I like about LT; I wouldn’t have taken time to blog about it or create that image if not.

Thanks for the picture. I’m going to show it at a talk I’m giving at a conference in Manhattan on Monday :)

“I mention this because it’s a nice demonstration of how categorization can be used in the place of argument. If I call you a “writer” (in quotes) I’ve simultaneously attacked and avoided having to justify myself.”

You are right. It’s not a feature I wanted, but that doesn’t invalidate its feature-ness; obviously some people (beyond LT staff) are excited by it. I apologize, and I have edited my post to change “feature” to feature.

You’re welcome to the image.

It is a feature, not a quote-unquote-feature. I have no problem calling this a blog, not a blog.

I mention this because it’s a nice demonstration of how categorization can be used in the place of argument. If I call you a “writer” (in quotes) I’ve simultaneously attacked and avoided having to justify myself.

The ability for categories and classifications to be “used” is a serious one. Clay Shiry calls this “voodoo ontology,” when your system forces your ideas on someone. Sometimes this is overt and intentional (eg., arguments in Congress of what race boxes to allow on the census form), sometimes the voodoo only takes hold later. It’s hard to tell which came first with the Dewey Decimal System, but it’s certainly the greatest example. Christianity gets 890 times as much space as Buddhism. Islam gets lumped in with a number of religions most Muslims regard with great suspicion. Portuguese is a special case of Spanish, women’s education a special case of education.

As you say, tagging gets beyond this. Where LCSH is binary and professes an objectivity we can only question, tagging can express nuance and embraces something like multi-subjectivity. I go on at some length in my Library of Congress talk about this very issue, mentioning the subtle but important differences between “gay,” “queer,” “LGBT” and “GLBT.” In a weird sort of irony, the “homosexual” tag–which in the LCSH world is the simple unmarked expression–is, on LibraryThing, strongly identified with ANTI-homosexual literature.

I think this problem is basic to classification. You can try to reach compromises, but, in the end, someone has to win.

In the case of gender, you should note that I raised the issue in the initial blog post, and we have been in a deep discussion about it ever since. That we haven’t resolved it says more about our deep love to discussion. (I might add that discussion has been pretty weak so far, with much more effort going into place names and such. Whether or not gender should be expanded or free-form, most users just don’t care. I would encourage you to post there, even the link to this blog.)

So, in a sense, I think it’s a step back too. It’s a step forward insofar as a more rigid system does have some advantages. By enforcing one field (or a field which can become more than one) we force users to work together.

Sometimes that’s a bad thing, but it can also be good. Wikipedia–which you mention–is an example of how it can work. Wikipedia is user-contributed, but it does not simultaneously reflect all of its users opinions. It could fork, but it mostly doesn’t. Things move toward consensus.

Sometimes the advantages of classification and standards are won at minimal expense. The community is now working out rules for places. Without a unified system, people would use any old expression they wanted. By forcing users to come to agreement, we can ensure that Texas isn’t split between “Texas,” “Tex.” and “TX.”

Incidentally, your point about discussion is well taken. In part, I think the community is small enough and engaged enough that the Common Knowledge group can do the job. But you have to be checking it. One possibility–which just came to me, so thank you for prompting this–would be to allow people to “touchstone” a work or an author in a way that specifically indicates CK is being discussed. That way we could put in the CK area a message like “The Common Knowledge relating to this author are under discussion; click here to read this discussion.”

Oddly enough, we actually DO have a comments feature, which would be an ideal place for footnotes. (Note however that Wikipedia’s interest in citation is relatiely recent.) Every edit can get a comment. We haven’t exposed this because, having built it in, we didn’t see an elegant and unobtrusive way to expose this in the user interface.

Unfortunately, all the options for exposing comments, discussion and etc. would require more space, which you’ve already come out against. Physical space–or virtual physical space–like traditional classification, is something someone has to win on.

Thanks for the post. Do you mind if I snag the image from your blog for mine?