11.20.2006

The problem with Folksonomies and tagging.

I came across an interesting article published in the November issue of D-Lib magazine today [1] that focuses on some philosophical issues with folksonomies and tagging The author brings up some good points about the culture of tagging and folksonomy. This immediately reminded me of a parallel thread that I captured on this topic a while back in a late night blog post. [Scroll down to the Call To Action section after top 10 list]. I vaguely recall commenting on the need for controlled vocabularies for tagging / folksonomies.

After re-reading my post, I think the author of this article does a decent job of articulating the need for (and value of) applying techniques from the world of cataloging, controlled vocabularies, and well defined rules for cataloging works (e.g. Dewey, MARC, Library of Congress), while at the same time understanding that folksonomies and social tagging are driving much of the web2.0 phenom. Anyway, I need to get back to work, so I'm going to cut this short. Maybe I'll try to expand on this post another time.

Here's my original call to action from my January 7, 2006 post:

CALL TO ACTION: taggers

We need a controlled vocabulary and some best practices and/or guidlines for taggers asap. If not, this whole social tagging and bookmarking phenomena is going to implode and get muddied with dirty metadata. I am of the opinion that we should strive to apply the library of congress cataloging rules (or similar methodology) and establish a set of rules for tagging and assigning metadata descriptions to internet works.

It's got to happen before tagging goes mainstream or else we're going to be back in the same place we were with the early search engines in the 1998-2000 era of the interweb.

Who wants to join my mission to bring the concept of a controlled vocabulary and set of guidelines for tagging to sites like del.icio.us, digg, and all the other tagging sites? If you're on board, please leave me a comment or track me down on my blog.





[1] Beneath the Metadata. Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy. D-Lib Magazine, November 2006, Volume 12 Number 11, ISSN 1082-9873. Elaine Peterson , Associate Professor / Information Resources Specialist, Montana State University

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