The trouble with folksonomy (the term)
Ericka Menchen says she has a problem with the term folksonomy in
The trouble with folksonomy (the term):
The trouble is that folksonomy is used to describe systems that allow users to tag their own content, and systems that allow users to tag the content of others (i.e. delicious).
I’ve told several people that I think author-tagging and reader-tagging are really two different things. I usually just get blank stares when I say this, so I’m glad someone else agrees with me.
Part of the reason reader-created folksonomies is that the terms used to describe the work are in the vocabulary of the reader, not the writer. Authors could never fully imagine how their readers will view their work. For this reason, reader-created folksonomies have a distinct advantage over author-created folksonomies.
I’d be interested to see if there are different patterns in tagging behavior between author-tagging and reader-tagging. I’d suspect that author-tagging tends to be more conservative, using fewer and more established terms, rather than invented or compound terms.
May 31st, 2005 at 6:10 am
Never thought about that, but obviously you’re right. Producers (whether of software, services, or physical goods) believe that their product has a certain use, and tend to promote that use. However, the users of the product may have a completely different idea as to what it’s good for, and will want to use it for that reason — *not* necessarily for the reasons the producer thinks are good. So yeah, the producer’s tags are one thing, but the user’s tags are a separate thing entirely. Great observation. :-)
May 31st, 2005 at 11:55 pm
Wikipedia: A portmanteau of the words folk (or folks) and taxonomy, the term folksonomy has been attributed to Thomas Vander Wal. Taxonomy is from “taxis” and “nomos” (from Greek). Taxis means classification. Nomos (or nomia) means management. Folk is people. So folksonomy means people’s classification management.
The trouble (or beauty) of the term folksonomy is that is a tag created by Vander Wal or someone else to describe a form of classification management. Whenever a tag is applied, it will be applied for a variety of reasons useful to, or not useful to, the applier, the producer of the object being tagged, or anybody else.
When I started using tags in Technorati, del.icio.us and Flickr I thought they would be most useful if I thought them out and applied them stringently. The more experience I have with them, the bolder I get inventing, borrowing, or refining tags.
June 1st, 2005 at 7:57 am
I’ll even go a bit further and call author-tagging spam.
http://corp.feedster.com/blog/rafer/archives/2005/04/tag_spam.html
June 1st, 2005 at 11:03 am
Scott-
Your claims are baseless.
June 2nd, 2005 at 8:02 am
As coined Folksonomy does not apply to authors tagging it applies to those who use or consume the information. For a long time Wikipedia was flat wrong on the subject, it was fixed, but now it includes examples that are flat wrong (well at least as the work was coined).
The word was coined to fill a gap, there was no work for user attributed tagging, done mostly for the user’s own consumption. There were words and is a word for the alternative: tagging, categories, metacrap, etc.
Some of the advisers to Technorati have strongly stated that what Technorati does is far from folksonomy, but it is tagging. They are dead on right. The tagging used by Technorati is helpful and better than what existed before, but not nearly as helpful as it could be.
June 2nd, 2005 at 7:09 pm
vanderwal-
Thanks for weighing in. I know that others around T-rati have clearly definited author tagging as something other than folksonomy. I still think, however, that there’s a good deal of misunderstanding regarding the differences between author and reader tagging.
You say “he tagging used by Technorati is helpful and better than what existed before, but not nearly as helpful as it could be.”
In what ways could it be more useful?
June 3rd, 2005 at 4:07 pm
I guess my cut is that tags are data, and folksonomy is just an aggregation of tag data. A lot of times, you want to sample some data and exclude others. For instance, as you note, you may not be interested in how people are tagging their own stuff. Well, exclude that from your folksonomy.
A subtle side point in this conversation is that services may not be giving you what you want (Thomas is not so happy with technorati). That’s one of the reasons I have pushed for a folksonomy microformat. Microformats essentially make it easier to share data across services. When services don’t have exclusive locks on data, they have to compete on giving you what you want.
I have a little note on this topic here:
http://thecommunityengine.com/home/archives/2005/06/web_20_can_and.html
June 4th, 2005 at 10:19 am
Bud-
Whatever you want to call them, whatever you want to do with them, I just think that author-tagging and reader-tagging are fundamentally different.
June 6th, 2005 at 9:26 am
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June 7th, 2005 at 3:18 am
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