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Folksonomies In Del.icio.us and Flickr
Ian@falsepositives.com writes "Lots of discussion going on about 'folksonomies' -- bottom-up taxonomies that people create on their own -- as used in Del.icio.us and Flickr: Adam Mathes has a thesis on Folksonomies; IFTF's Future Now makes a point about problems with folksonomies: no synonym control ( "mac" and "macintosh" on Del.icio.us); no hierarchy and content types; and only simple one-word tags. Joho the Blog notices a discussion about what to call it in Mob indexing? Folk categorization? Social tagging?, and John Battelle links into Taggle and "federated tagging". I wonder if a Google Suggest like system might reduce 'lazy tagging' ,and maybe synonym control when the federation appears. Tag, you're it!"
That was the single most incoherent paragraph I have read in awhile. I'm afraid to RTFA because it'll probably result in me contracting brain cancer somehow.
I must need more sleep.. that looked like complete gibberish to me.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
And this is also why search-based systems like GMail and Zoe that let you group and classify things on the fly are so useful. And it's not limited to computer stuff, either. Haven't you ever tried to figure out which of your (manila) file folders you should use to file a receipt?
EricSee your HTTP headers here
Instead, these systems works because there are so many participants, it doesn't matter if you miss 50%, 80 or 90% of them because of differing tag names.
no synonym control ( "mac" and "macintosh" on Del.icio.us)
Aren't words what people make them to be? I mean, if many people, from the bottom up, decide that "Mac" should be primarily a synonymous of "Macintosh" (which it is, de facto), then secondarily an acronym for an ethernet card address, then for TV addicts a short for Duncan McLeod, so what? Who's to define what words mean if it's not the people who use them?
I mean look at the French: they have something called the "French academy" that makes up a bunch of words willy-nilly every year, after much discussion, to be added to the "official" french language, but without consulting the potential users (the French). Well guess what: most of these words aren't known, let alone used, with precious few exceptions.
So I say great: if grassroot efforts end up redefining the language, and help consolidate new words into the core language, and help create new words and expressions, I say fine. That's what defines a living language that people like and use.
That title alone suggests it is more pompous than the slashdot submission.
This all looks like nothing more than a filing system for the anally retentive.
I'm sorry, but this is not a very good idea. After it has got popular enough to attract attention, it will be ripe for abuse.
You can just imagine what the bots will be tagging the viagra ads and nudie pics with...
Sure, we can start with bayesian filtering and manual deletion all over again, just like with wikis and blogs. But isn't it time that we start caring about these issues before we jump on every new product?
/* Note: this is going to be off topic, so I don't mind if it gets modded that way */ I read the damn thing at least 3 times... not that I didn't understand for first (I know about it all over, and the linked stuff) but for the plain reason that I just couldn't believe my eyes someone could put together a paragraph which sounds so totally out of language non-human gibberish all over. My head just hurts. Indeed.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
If the concept is so simple to explain (and it is, because you just did it), why was that explanation not included in the article? Instead, they introduce this "folksonomies" term, give an eight-word definition that includes two terms (bottom-up and taxonomies) which need further explanation to put them in the proper context, and expect everybody to understand what's being talked about.
It only seems to hold as long as the controller/owner of the system succeeds in keeping porn or other aggressively commercial media out of its systems.
When that happens, popular keywords will soon start referring to porn and such media and the designers will need to think of other ways to determine relevancy of terms/keywords/tags to an object.
The article is interesting and relevant to any "unspoiled" community tag-database. But imo, it has little value when talking about systems that have been open for some time to the commercial scum, that seems to succeed in filling every nook and cranny of the internet.
If the concept is so simple to explain (and it is, because you just did it), why was that explanation not included in the article? Instead, they introduce this "folksonomies" term, give an eight-word definition that includes two terms (bottom-up and taxonomies) which need further explanation to put them in the proper context, and expect everybody to understand what's being talked about.
It's called "wanting to be hip, even if noone else understands what I say".
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!