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There have been ample suggestions in the literature that terms added to
documents from Flickr and Wikipedia can complement traditional methods of
indexing and controlled vocabularies. At the same time, adding new metadata
to existing metadata objects may not always add value to those objects. The
potential added-value of using user-contributed (''social'') terms from
Flickr and the English Wikipedia in image indexing is compared with using
two expert-created controlled vocabularies-the Thesaurus for Graphic
Materials and the Library of Congress Subject Headings-without those social
terms. Experiments confirmed that the social terms did add value, relative
to terms from the controlled vocabularies. The median rating for the
usefulness of social terms was significantly higher than the baseline
rating, but was lower than the ratings for the terms from the Thesaurus for
Graphic Materials and the Library of Congress Subject Headings.
Furthermore, complementing the controlled vocabulary terms with social
terms more than doubled the average coverage of participants' terms for a
photograph. The relationships between user demographics and users'
perceptions of the value of terms were also investigated, as well as the
relationships between user demographics and indexing quality, as measured
by the number of terms participants assigned to a photograph. Participants
with more tagging and indexing experience assigned a greater number of tags
than did other participants.
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