Many of the core features we develop for GroupSwim depend on high quality tags to associate with content. The tags we produce from the Natural Language Processing get applied to all content added to a group/site. For example, we tag emails, discussions, files and wiki pages. The software suggests tags automatically and the user adding the content gets the option of using the tags we suggest, adding their own, or a combination of both. Our goal is to product quality tagging with this methodology.
The benefits from high quality tagging are significant.
- Our semantic search engine finds information quickly and efficiently. For example, if you search on the word integration, the search engine suggests other words associated with integration allowing a user to narrow their search and find what they want fast. This would not be possible without consistent tagging.
- Topics you care about get tagged every time and are very visible for analysis and response. You can train the software to key on tags that are most relevant to your group. For example, you could add your products or competitors to the tagging engine to ensure the content always gets tagged. Furthermore, you can create relationships with the tags. For example, you could train the engine to know “Apple” is a type of “Computer”. Then, if you search on “Computer”, it will also bring up content tagged “Apple” even if it doesn’t have the word “Computer” anywhere in the content.
- You can find experts based on the content they add; this is extremely helpful in large, distributed groups where people don’t know each other. By applying quality tags, and then correlating them with the person who added the content and the groups reaction to the content, we are able to associate tags with people who have authority on them.
- We passively suggest related content giving people the best possible chance to find what they need. We do this by suggesting related content based on the semantic relationship of the tags.
- We flat out get better tags. People tend to be lazy with tagging and don’t do it unless they are really committed. We take this barrier out by doing it automatically.
Good tagging is key for enhancing content and making knowledge smarter.
P.S. I got the idea to write about this after commenting on another blog. I thought, hell, I thought all this through, I might as well put it on our blog too.
