Measuring the influence of tag recommenders on the indexing quality in tagging systems

In this paper, we investigate a methodology for measuring the influence of tag recommenders on the indexing quality in collaborative tagging systems. We propose to use the inter-resource consistency as an indicator of indexing quality. The inter-resource consistency measures the degree to which the tag vectors of indexed resources reflect how the users understand the resources. We use this methodology for evaluating how tag recommendations coming from (1) the popular tags at a resource or from (2) the user's own vocabulary influence the indexing quality. We show that recommending popular tags decreases the indexing quality and that recommending the user's own vocabulary increases the indexing quality.