FolkSonomy

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Read with TechnoratiTags, KnowledgeIsNotATree

Folksonomy, a new term for socially created, typically flat name-spaces of the del.icio.us ilk, coined by Thomas Vander Wal.

http://www.corante.com/many/

Now there's a specialist blog : http://tagsonomy.com/

ClayShirky says : I am predicting that, as with the earlier arc of knowledge management, the question of meaningful markup is going to move away from canonical and a priori to contextual and a posteriori value.

(And see : SpontaneousIntegration)

See PrimeTags

Term criticised : http://www.peterme.com/archives/000387.html

further point : http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000361.php

BillSeitz:z2004-08-26-UdellKeywordFeedback links to JonUdell : http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/11/08.html#a1109

Jan 2005 : http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html

ClayShirky responds to criticism from InformationArchitecture :http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/07/folksonomiescontrolledvocabularies.php

JonesFirstLawOfWiki, really wiki got here a long-time ago with CategoryCategory.

And TomCoates says : http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/06/twoculturesoffauxonomiescollide.shtml

More on the Folksonomy-wiki connection : via http://www.pycs.net/users/0000177/2005/01/18.html#P313 via the BillSeitz page (above).

And remember what I said over here : on http://www.iawiki.net/EmergentArchitecture on EmergentArchitecture :

Wiki is the biggest challenge, because its evolving conventions go beyond the layout of a single page, and let people adapt the higher level information space to their own preference. Personal and alternative classification schemes can be hacked-up on a new page. CategoryCategory allows searchable classification. UseMod?'s REDIRECT? can implement a basic thesaurus.

PeterMe : http://www.peterme.com/archives/000444.html

And Scale : http://noisebetweenstations.com/personal/weblogs/index.php?p=1529

Is it MarketPopulism?

LizLawly worries : (and http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/20/socialconsequencesofsocialtagging.php (and interesting MiddleSpace related : A system by which people can form epistomology gangs who decide to share tags, and declare a concensually [sic] decided-upon meaning and remit for them. That’s when tags can start to become categories, grouped, separated, weeded, updated, expanded etc. and a link to the EspGame )

I think, however, that the same factors that influence players of the ESP Game to try to maximize agreement rather than depth are also at work in the new folksonomic playgrounds. Increasingly, people are changing the way they label their links or photos because of how they see other people labeling them. Knowing that your descriptors will change how people can access your content can’t help but change the way you use the tags—just as knowing that people will read your blog influence the way you write. Tagging for your own retrieval is different than tagging for retrieval by people you know (say, searching for posts on your blog) and even more different than tagging for retrieval in an completely uncontextualized environment—like TechnoRati.

the follow up : wonders http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/20/itsthesocialnetworkstupid.php wonders whether SocialRouting (ie. classification by your selected social network, not the whole world might be more useful. Obviously, and another MiddleSpace related note. Although there's always a TradeOff between surprise and reliability. The more you prejudge the classification scheme by limiting it to a reliable group of co-classifiers, the less likely you are to hit upon a really innovative new way to start classifying.

ClayShirky responds to DavidWeinberger : http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/23/theinnovatorslemma.php

Lawley : we shouldn't throw away the value of good, professional classification

Shirky : yes, but there are lots of places where we can't have it, so we'll get folksonomy / ethnoclassification anyway

Weinberger : won't namespaces give us a technical fix where different groups will be able to opt-in or out of particular classification schemes

Shirky : yes, but only for small, controlled spaces. TopDown, hierarchical taxonomy by pros is too expensive and difficult to scale. Anything that operates at really large scale takes on the characteristics of organic systems, including especially degeneracy, the principle that there is not a one-to-one mapping between function and location in the system. (Christopher Alexander got there a long time ago, in A City Is Not a Tree, to which we might only add that the Web is not a tree either.)

If we’re going to let just any old person write whatever they want and then make it available globally, we’re going to have to extend the same freedom to classifying the resulting flood of material.

(Which is pretty much EditorializingIsParallelizable :-)

SayedRazavi's comment is good too.

Tags != Folksonomies : ClayShirky], http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/24/tagsfolksonomiestagsflatname_spaces.php, [[ClayShirky,] as so often, dropping righteous science on the masses. (KnowledgeIsNotATree)

New version : OntologyOverrated