Web 2.0 and users’ expectations of indexes

Abstract

Web 2.0 involves little new technology but it is a significant development, signalling a move from Internet users as content consumers to users as content creators. In seeking to organize their material, these users are developing their own information retrieval techniques, far removed from traditional analytical indexing. Having already been persuaded to accept incomplete retrieval and high noise as the price of fast keyword searching, they seem ready to believe indexing might best be done by a consensus of untrained users. It seems likely that traditional indexing skills will become increasingly marginalized even though there are sound social reasons for trying to preserve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]