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Findings
This page http://tagunity.wikispaces.com/findings DRAFT 1161147437

Those who write about online portals developed specifically for communities of practice (CoPs) emphasise the need to enable users to contribute content that is authentic to their professional context (e.g. Dixon, Allen, Burgess, Kilner & Schweitzer, 2005). By comparison, social tagging applications such as Del.icio.us are relatively lacking in social functionality, particularly when compared to social networking services (SNS) like LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com).

There is a gap in the research around the use of social tagging applications by distributed members of online professional communities. Formal ontologies may be too formal for members of many CoPs. The community driven approach to metadata management argues that ontologies for CoPs should be simple to create and use.

The application of Practice Based Theories (PBTs) to the emerging practice of 'social-tagging' in databases on the World Wide Web could help to identify key questions and concepts that are common to a social/community approach to understanding the creation of shared practice and associated meanings, vocabularies and semantics, as well as the practices and technologies associated with the creation of folksonomies and more structured metadata representation of knowledge using online applications.

There are multiple visions, models and emerging approaches for research related to the building of application to support knowledge sharing online using the principles discussed in this research. It appears, however, that while several of theses visions have a shared idea of the use of simple_ontologies such as RSS, FOAF, and vCard (which are already common in blogging and some SNS applications), there is apparently little dialogue between the visionaries or members of their constituent disciplines or field of study.

The Tagunity wiki (http://tagunity.wikispaces.com) is my initial attempt to capture some of the key published research across the multiple areas discussed. The next step perhaps is to take this literature and begin an analysis of the discussion that could arise from the tensions between formal and informal content classification, ant the potential utility of the visions and models discussed.

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//For example, Denning and Dunham (2006) provide a model for relating the seven elements of conversational-innovation in multidisciplinary innovation. This research identifies many overlapping conversations, between for example those who research blogging, communities of practice, and related concepts (e.g. Sauer, Bialek, Efimova, Schwartlander, Pless, & Neuhaus, 2005; Anjewierden, Brussee, & Efimova, 2005). //

[//todo move the following paragraph to analysis of literature section (above)//] Many chapters published by the //Idea Group// and one or two its subsidiaries explore various socio-technical topics related to knowledge sharing, communities and social netwoking. Chapters cover, for example, knowledge management, virtual communities and community informatics (e.g. Gurstein, 2000). Figueiredo and Afonso's (2006) //Managing learning in virtual settings// includes various chapters on communities, activity theory and e-learning. A brief list follows:
 * O'Murchu, Zhdanova, & Breslin, (2007), on "Semantic community portals, and the role of "community-driven ontology management"
 * Dasgupta, (2006) //Encyclopedia of virtual communities and technologies//
 * Schwartz, (2006) //Encyclopedia of knowledge management//
 * Khosrowpour-Pour, (2005) //Encyclopedia of information science and technology.//

[//todo move the following paragraph to analysis of literature section (above)//] //A significant task of this research has been to make sense of the overlaps and intersections in literature across several disciplines. One part of achieving this in some way was to identify some of the key authors, journals and publishers. Some patterns begin to emerge from a bibliography of over 200 items. Investigation of the patterns, overlaps and intersections is one way of identifying priorities for further research. The fact that one publisher can produce so many chapters on topics related to this research project could suggest that there is a need for a discursive space that archives related conversations.//

Content classification across boundaries
Formal ontologies may be seen as knowledge representations with the potential to act as boundary objects (Bowker & Star, 1999] for some sort of community, at least the sort of community that agress with the ontology. This argument is made by Domingue, Motta, Buckingham-Shum, Vargas-Vera, Kalfoglou, and Farnes, who suggest ontologies can support "communication and negotiation over meaning between stakeholders within and across communities of practice," (2001, abstract, p. 30).

CoPs as boundary object
(e.g. Martin, Hatzakis, & Lycett 2004; Hislop, 2004).

Further research
Perhaps one way to explore emerging research related to this project is to take a social-centric approach to documenting the conversation that emerge around research related to the concepts outlined.

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//One researcher of interest is Aldo de Moor, who on one hand collaborates with Lilia Efimova (de Moor, & Efimova, 2004; Efimova, & de Moor, & 2005) whose principle research foci are communities of practice (CoPs) and blogging. On the other hand de Moor recently co-wrote a manifesto for pragmatic web. Typically bloggin communities, like CoPs, are mostly seen as bottom up, dynamic, and best left to evolve organically without too much structure (e.g. Janson, Howard, & Schoenberger-Orgad, 2004). This is why it is interesting to see that Efimova has a collaborator who is considering more pragmatic ways to achieve the vision of the Semantic Web. The connection is that both vision for a pragmatic web, and Efimova and de Moor's idea of blogging are both, potentially, about conversations. In particular conversations and connections assisted by systems which allow users, to easily add semantic structure to the data the use and create. This is rather different to the view of semantically structured data, the creation of which deserves to by created and maintained by ontology engineers, as appears to be the most common view expressed in the Semantic Web literature (e.g. McComb, 2004).//

Recent papers by Aldo de Moor

 * Schoop, M., de Moor, A., & Dietz, J. L. G. (2006). The pragmatic web: A manifesto. //Communications of the ACM, 49//(5), 75-76 (available via [|ACM]
 * de Moor, A., & Efimova, L. (2004, June 2-3). //An argumentation analysis of weblog conversations//. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 9th International Working Conference on the Language-Action Perspective on Communication Modelling (LAP 2004), New Brunswick, NJ.
 * Efimova, L., & de Moor, A. (2005, January 3-6). //Beyond personal webpublishing: An exploratory study of conversational blogging practices//. Paper presented at the Thirty-Eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Hawaii (available via [|ACM]