Chung-Man Tam, My Web Product Manager, writes on the Yahoo Search blog that people should be able to tag and share they links what they want and that if you don't like it, then tough toenails ...
"Why can I say that? Well remember folks, My Web 2.0 is a social search engine where your community shares their insights with you. While the web can sometimes seem like the Wild Wild West, the trusted web is a place where you decide who you want to listen to. If I like the stuff that someone saves and the tags that they’re using, I’ll connect to them! If I don’t…well, you know."
Chung-Man, with all due respect, I agree but disagree. Yahoo has gone to great lengths to talk about how My Web 2.0 is a system that lets you find stuff from people you trust. Thats' cool, but at the same time you're not making it easy for the user to block out results from users they don't trust!
Right now, the only way to accomplish this really is by broad omission - e.g. to only listen to voices one trusts. Unfortunately, this then means users will miss out some of the gems the broader tagging community is sharing. You need to add a feature in the broader cloud view that says "aha, I think this is spam so don't show me any results from Joe Schmo anymore." You already let users block results from Web searches, so why not do the same in the tag cloud? For example, it turns out all the links I blogged about yesterday were not intentional spam, but rather the result of innocent human error. It doesn't matter because tam spam - or spag - is a coming. I should be able to block those results or the user out if the system is truly personalized.
If Yahoo is really all about personalization and trust, then it needs to step up to the plate and again take a leadership role in making it easy for users to tune out questionable results they don't want to see. Give us the tools to create a truly personalized tag cloud. Right now, what you have is a one-way street. Go the distance.
