Category: media

Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information Online | WIRED

~ cafebedouin ~ Leave a comment

“On [Archive of Our Own, a.k.a.] AO3, users can put in whatever tags they want. (Autocomplete is there to help, but they don’t have to use it.) Then behind the scenes, human volunteers look up any new tags that no one else has used before and match them with any applicable existing tags, a process known as tag wrangling.”

—Samantha Puc, “Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information Online.” Wired. June 11, 2019.

There’s been lots of discussion of the significance of AO3’s Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

Modest proposal? Use this process on new terms entered in the search box of a library’s online catalog to surface subject headings for users. It’s a logical extension of the catalogers work.

Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music

~ cafebedouin ~ Leave a comment

“This guide is rated [M] Mature. It is a love letter to underground counter-culture. 90% of the music here is enjoyed by freaks wearing crazy outfits, consuming copious amounts of drugs, and engaging in 3-day sex benders with indeterminate genders. It is not for children. I am not going to sanitize things just so your precious little Jeighden can locate the latest tweenwave ringtone they ripped off Twitch…

Q: What literature did you read to learn all this stuff?

A: I have 30 years of back issues of Electronic Music and Keyboard magazine, with an ungodly number of books also collected over the decades…As for modern literature, a better answer is what I don’t read: For starters, any magazine, blog, website, newsletter, flyer, TV show, podcast, record label, chart, press release or bathroom graffiti that uses the acronym ‘EDM’ is complete donkey balls and should not be relied on as a source for anything…

Q: What makes you the authority on electronic music?

A: You may know some of it more than me, but I know all of it more than you.”

—http://music.ishkur.com/#

This guide is not complete donkey balls. Even if you have zero interest in electronic music, the frequently unasked questions page, some of which is quoted above, is hilarious.

h/t Openculture.