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November 3, 2004
technorati vote links
Posted by Liz Lawley
I probably shouldn’t be writing anything at all on a day when I feel this curmudgeonly, but the unveiling this week of Technorati’s “vote links” has spurred me to finally post here again.
It was close to two years ago that I first heard this idea surfaced in a discussion related to emergent democracy. Then, as now, I agreed that Google’s approach to PageRank—in which all links are created equal, regardless of context or intent—was flawed. But I argued then, and still feel now, that using the terminology of “voting” was equally flawed. I’m deeply uncomfortable with reducing everything to a binary vote, and with tinging every link with an explicit or implicit stance.
Not everything is an election. Not everything is a “for” or “against.” Suppose, for example, I come across an extremely well-written article that I don’t agree with. Am I “for it” because I think it’s worth reading and considering? Or am I “against it” because I disagree with the content?
Yes, PageRank and its cousins are flawed. Yes, we need a better way to be able to link to something without boosting it. But no, I don’t think this is the way.
Comments (6)
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1. Francois Lachance on November 3, 2004 11:47 AM writes...
Liz,
Could the unease about ranking be related to a wish to be able to re-rank? It would be lovely to apply re-ordering criteria to a listing. Of course, users can conduct further searches within a given listing but that is not quite the same as re-ordering the listing.
There is a cultural component to the behaviour involved in accepting the top of the list as being the most relevant to the searcher's needs. I am willing to wager that users that have benefited from the coaching and assistance provided by librarians don't necessarily or as quickly ascribe to the top of the list is best attitude.
Voting is about selection : in or out.
Re-ordering is about shuffling and exploring.
They are very different approaches to the ascription of value.
Permalink to Comment2. Liz Lawley on November 3, 2004 11:55 AM writes...
No, it's not about wanting to change my mind. It's a fundamental dis-ease with the use of "electoral" terminology in this context. Even if what I wanted was a "voting" mechanism (and I don't), I believe that valid votes need process and context. A set of propositions, a clear set of alternatives, a start and an end to the process. "Vote links" have none of these. Votes imply "winners" and "losers"--how are we to interpret them in an open-ended world of links?
And thus far, the way vote links have been used is almost exclusively to vote "for" or "against" people (candidates) rather than to expression opinions on ideas. It's personalities rather than principles.
I'd be significantly more comfortable with a way to remove a link that I make from being "counted" in pagerank or similar contexts. If I link to Drudge, I don't want to "vote against" him. But I also don't want my vote to inflate his pagerank. I'd like a way to link to something without implicitly assisting it in the all-important search engine ranking.
Permalink to Comment3. Abe on November 3, 2004 2:16 PM writes...
I agree with Liz that "vote links" can't be interpretted in an open-ended world of links. But, they can be interpretted if you collapse that open-ended world.
For example, technorati (or someone else) could collaboratively filter these "vote links" for individual bloggers in the same way that Yahoo's Launch.com filters votes for music to group together users with similar tastes and introduce users to new music that they are likely to enjoy.
Back in the blogosphere, if we get enough people making "vote links" and someone collaboratively filters them, we can all have our own personalized, collaboratively-filtered, constantly-evolving RSS feed.
Social networks would emerge around issues/themes in the same way that users clump together around musical genres. But instead of seeing what genres you're attracted to, you'll be able to see what issues you tend to define as important. And everyone can see where everyone else stands.
On a tangent, this could have interesting political ramifications. That is, since we'll be able to find people with particular interests, knowledge, abilities, and reputations, we'll be able to more easily self-organize, without having to make reference to status quo institutions.
Permalink to Comment4. Scott Rafer on November 3, 2004 3:45 PM writes...
It's misleading to say that "Google’s approach to PageRank [is one] in which all links are created equal, regardless of context or intent." PageRank isn't simply a tallying of links, but based on similar math to feedback loops. A link from the News.com or some other important homepage has a lot higher value than a link from corante.com or alwayson-network.com.
There are other problems with Google's approach, but they are the problems that are being experienced with EVERY hyperlink-based approach. They are all declining rapidly.
Permalink to Comment5. Yaacov on November 3, 2004 4:19 PM writes...
The vote links have far more granularity than 'for', 'against' and 'abstain'. You could vote-quality, vote-pagerank, vote-nuts, vote-boring or anything else you think is appropriate.
The vote link is like metadata, but it's metadata about the opinions of the content, not the content itself. Instead of describing the content, you're describing what you think about it.
It would also be possible to combine them, ex. vote-quality-pagerank. Google could count only those that have pagerank, or not count those that have nopagerank, or even subtract for unpagerank votes.
And I agree with Abe, someone should definitely make a colloborative filter for it.
Permalink to Comment6. Richard Ault on November 4, 2004 6:18 PM writes...
Liz, thanks for checking out the Vote Links. Although it seems you have concluded incorrectly that this particular (alpha) implementation is representative of our corpus of thought on the subject of the metadata associated with hyperlinking.
Imho, we (Technorati), are doing our part to open the door to increasing the utility of the metadata associated with the activity. We don't see this as a binary, we see this as an open ended opportunity for people to assign whatever context they see fit to the links they choose to publish.
Kevin Marks, Tantek Celik and myself are happy to continue the conversation, thanks for getting it started Liz.
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