Off the Mark

In the latest Carnival of the Infosciences #25 I featured a post by Andrea Mercado:

Andrea Mercado at LibraryTechtonics muses "On Tagging People."  It is an interesting post that intriguingly has something to say about the recent meme of fours to travel through
the biblioblogosphere, among other places.  Even if some of it is
beyond your knowledge of "friendship" in an online environment, stick
it through to the end and then let’s see if we can help Andrea give
form to her thoughts.  Nice list of resources included.

I see it somewhat of a reminder that considering content
and information about
people and things is not the same as considering the resulting
relationships and knowledge about people and things on the New Web (an
incomplete thought in my brain that’s still a work in progress).

At the opening of my Carnival post I said:

That is my goal for this Carnival—can we maybe discuss some of these further?  I have not had the time I’d like to really consider these, and I’m not even sure what Andrea is talking about at points, but I think there is something important being said in all of them.  I hope that maybe we can re-look some of these and perhaps discuss them a bit more in the hopes of furthering the good bits [emphasis not in original].

Greg Schwartz of Open Stacks, and Carnival creator, commented that "I really enjoyed his admission that "I’m not even sure what Andrea is
talking about at points." I laughed because I felt the same way after
my first reading of her post "On  Tagging People." It’s a worthy read though."

Andrea responds with "I’m a librarian, ask me questions!"

First, let me give a small apology to Andrea.  I do basically understand what she is discussing.  I know what the topic is.  I honestly debated using that terminology in my post and never was really happy with it.  But I was way too busy to spend much time trying to get it perfect.  I wish I could have.  [Although, I'm not unhappy with what I said about the post itself.]

My lack of understanding falls mostly in the experiential realm.  I have not used much of the type of social software that Andrea discusses, and those that I have used have been used primarily as an assist at the individual level.  I do not use most of the "social features."

Andrea says that "Most of it makes sense to me as food for thought and discussion."  I agree entirely.  That is why I selected it for the Carnival.  She goes on to say,

I’m a librarian with a hypertext mental process who is open to cordial intellectual dialog. When in doubt, or just totally confused, send me email (and/or send me your IM handle, and we can chat). Ask me questions. Challenge my ideas. Make opposite arguments. Add your own support comments. Tell me what you don’t get. Even if I don’t write a whole email back, I’ll post what I think is interesting and/or might help other people understand (names can be witheld to protect the innocent, never fear, simply ask). Alternately, post something about it on your blog.

I agree with her on all of this too.  I wish that I had had time to contact her before the Carnival to clarify any of my misunderstanding but, alas, I did not.  Again, I wish I had had the time and energy to make a better comment in regards to Andrea’s valuable post.

So, for the record:  My comment on my lack of understanding of Andrea’s post was not to suggest that it is somehow incomprehensible, or even simply unclear.  It was entirely about my personal experiences, or lack thereof, with the types of software she was discussing.  Go read her post.  Think about it.  Discuss it.  Contact her if you like, as she suggests.  Personally, I’d love to be able to sit around over some coffee or beers with Andrea and her husband to learn from them.