I just came up with a new idea for this before I read the results and the other new posts.

I can take the links and make a webpage with them. (and explain the experiment) Then, submit the page to search engines with all the keywords(tags). Then from there I could track how people get to the page by what words they use in a search.

It's just an idea and a way to get more people involved.

Emily,

I'm not sure what the goals are. I get mining for more words by using the search terms to locate the page of links you created. However, I wonder if that page of static links might get in the way of participation.

If people find the del.icio.us/nptech project useful they will go to that page and that will get them to contribute links. Another page might prevent them from contributing links.

As I'm writing this, though, I realize that what you are talking about could get at relevant search terms from a non-delicious/nptech participant and, like mining the TechSoup and TechFinder pages, could add more data to the mix.

hmmm.....I do worry about the work in keeping it up though. It would be adding a links over time, with keywords in the header, and that could be hard to maintain.

Maybe we could ask heavily linked sites to submit search terms to the project? That also might end up being helpful.

Just my thoughts. As I said at the beginning, it's an open experiment.

Emily W. said:

I can take the links and make a webpage with them. (and explain the experiment) Then, submit the page to search engines with all the keywords(tags). Then from there I could track how people get to the page by what words they use in a search.

I doubt that that republishing the tag analysis results and capturing the search keywords will discover any new keywords. Unless Google et al are doing some sort of semantic approximation that's better than the folksonomic classification being done by the del.icio.us taggers, my guess is that your results will simply amplify the most popular of the related tags already discovered.

Just updated the NPTech Experiment: Preliminary Results to include the nptech-related tags used more than 10 times. Again, the info is courtesy of Brian.

Okay, and some more data added. Again, Brian mined the data and presented the views.

I was thinking I would make an informational page about tagging with nptech so others could learn about the experiment. I would not have any links except to the nptech del.icio.us page and to the messages about the experiment.

Tagging is still new and this would be a way to get more people involved.

I decided to make a new blog instead of a webpage. I am not sure if we will get more involved in tagging but it is worth a try. The blog is at http://nptechtaginfo.blogspot.com/

Hey Emily,

Nice job on the blog: http://nptechtaginfo.blogspot.com/.

:mw

Thanks for pointing out that only users could comment on the blog. I did not realize I had that setting saved. I just fixed that.

I will be adding more information on the nptech blog.

Also, since yesterday another user has started to add bookmarks to nptech.

Emily's comments, "Thanks for pointing out that only users could comment on the blog. I did not realize I had that setting saved. I just fixed that," refers to a comment I left on the blog. Just so that's not too confusing.

I'm thinking you'll want to put the RSS feed from delicious for NPTech into the sidebar on this new blog, no? By way of example, I have an RSS feed of my recent comments on my blog. Let me know if you'd like to see my code.

This is a great idea, and I'm anxious to see how you continue to cultivate this through a combination of tagging and RSS feeds. This could have some great applications for things that we also follow here at omidyar.net. Thanks for the heads-up on this, Marnie!

Will reach out to Tom Munnecke and Howard Rheingold to see if they have any thoughts to share. They've been talking about this kind of thing as it might relate to a "good apples" style news service.

Ted, Marnie had also suggest to have the rss feed on the sidebar. I am trying to figure out how to add it.

Just got a note from Howard saying he's on the road for the next few weeks. Perhaps he'll connect when he gets back.

Emily,

You can use a service called RSS Digest to do this. Essentially, you'll plug the del.icio.us RSS feed in, set some parameters, and then put the resulting javascript into the side bar of the blog -- under your profile and the archives, for example.

By kind to the del.icio.us servers and have RSS Digest refresh once every 12 hours. I know, it doesn't update that fast but they are beleagured so it seems like a reasonable setting. I'd go for 6am so that it's relatively fresh in the morning.

Sue,

Thanks for reaching out.