Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Folksonomies In Del.icio.us and Flickr

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the power-to-the-personages dept.

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!"

6 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. What the??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:What the??? by xZAQx · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.


      That pile of shit is ONE sentence.


      Slashdot: Where grammar is sacrificed for stories about "revolutionary" technologies such as blogs and other bullshit made up trends that will be nonexistent in 6 months.

      --

      We dance to all the wrong songs.
      --Refused.
    2. Re:What the??? by marketingshift · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I tried to break it down from my 2 yeard old daughter's point of view. Let me know if this works for you. http://www.marketingshift.com/2005/01/folksonomies -toddlers.cfm

  2. wtf?!? by marcushnk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. But but... by Roland+Piquepaille · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Learn to read by Dachannien · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.