[Tagdb] Tag Relevance

[anand]

Hi,

I have been involved in designing an information retrieval system that takes
tag meta-data into account as well. I figured out two approaches to rank
items based on the tag information:

   1. Purely based on the number of users that have tagged that item. Say
   item1 has been tagged by 10 users as tag1 and item2 by 20 users as tag1,
   then item1 would end-up having a higher ranking.
   2. Based on the relative ranking of a tag when the collective wisdom
   of the crowd is taken into account. To further the explanation consider 2
   items. Item1 has tags tag1(by 100 users) and tag2(by 10 users).
Item2has tag2(by
   10 users). When a user searches for tag2, by approach 1 (above) ietm1
   and item2 would be comparable as both have 10 users tagging it as tag2.
   But in this approach, item2 would be more relevant as for item1although 10
   users have tagged it as tag2, 100 users have (taking collective wisdom
   into account) tagged it as tag1. Hence tag2 for item1 is relatively
   less relevant than tag2 for item2.

In my opinion, approach 2 seems more reasonable as it takes into account how
people are collectively describing an object. But some people beg to differ
as they reason that tags need to be treated individually and are independent
of the other tags.

Which do you think would yield better results? Your thoughts on the same?
Any other approach that you might have used?

Thanks,
Anand.
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