Tagging vs folksonomy vs categorisation

Created by Catherine Howell (La Trobe University) on October 3, 2005

Just discovered (via Academic Commons): You're It! A blog on tagging.

This pro-tagging manifesto caught my attention. It takes a line that is, at first view, not entirely dissimilar to the "wisdom of crowds" argument currently circulating in ICT / KM circles.

This particular post is one energetic volley in an ongoing debate. Definitely worth a read:

tagging is already better fit for discovering and reflecting both personal and group mental models; does a better job of handling ambiguous or dynamic cases; provides judgment-related context (’funny’, ‘cool’); allows better mapping to communities of the like-minded; and is, on top of all of that, cheap cheap cheap. These advantages are driving adoption, and the early adopters are now suffering from the lack of well-developed tools, but new inventions will arise to service those users, and this will lead to more later-but-still-early adopters, sharpening the problems further but with a bigger user base, thus increasing the incentive for still more improvement, lather, rinse, repeat.

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		Tagging vs folksonomy vs categorisation Created by Catherine Howell (La Trobe University) on October 3, 2005 Just discovered (via Academic Commons): You're It! A blog on tagging. This pro-tagging manifesto caught my attention. It takes a line that is, at first view, not entirely dissimilar to the "wisdom of crowds" argument currently circulating in ICT / KM circles. This particular post is one energetic volley in an ongoing debate. Definitely worth a read: tagging is already better fit for discovering and reflecting both personal and group mental models; does a better job of handling ambiguous or dynamic cases; provides judgment-related context (’funny’, ‘cool’); allows better mapping to communities of the like-minded; and is, on top of all of that, cheap cheap cheap. These advantages are driving adoption, and the early adopters are now suffering from the lack of well-developed tools, but new inventions will arise to service those users, and this will lead to more later-but-still-early adopters, sharpening the problems further but with a bigger user base, thus increasing the incentive for still more improvement, lather, rinse, repeat. categorisation \| Folksonomies \| Metadata \| tagging Catherine's blog Login or register to post comments 5060 reads
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