Folksonomy advantages:
My experience with tagging on Flickr and Delicious has so far allowed me to appreciate that the benefits of 'folksonomy' far outweigh those of 'taxonomy'.
When I began tagging, I often found myself wondering whether I should be trying to place the item in the correct category. I had to continually remind myself that a tag can be anything I want it to be. From my experience with taxonomies I can recall that they are often frustrating because not all items fit comfortably within a defined category. I can imagine that this lack of fit could happen if the concept is so new that no terms describing the topic have been added to the taxonomy yet. Due to the flexible and immediate nature of folksonomies, people are able to gain greater access to more current digital technology such as 'folksonomies'
My experience with tagging on Flickr and Delicious has so far allowed me to appreciate that the benefits of 'folksonomy' far outweigh those of 'taxonomy'.
When I began tagging, I often found myself wondering whether I should be trying to place the item in the correct category. I had to continually remind myself that a tag can be anything I want it to be. From my experience with taxonomies I can recall that they are often frustrating because not all items fit comfortably within a defined category. I can imagine that this lack of fit could happen if the concept is so new that no terms describing the topic have been added to the taxonomy yet. Due to the flexible and immediate nature of folksonomies, people are able to gain greater access to more current digital technology such as 'folksonomies'
Adaptability – new terms can quickly evolve and be applied to new concepts.
Lower cost – There are no financial pressures on creators and authors as the workload is distributed amongst a large number of people.
Flexible – There are no rigid constructs.
Takes into account multiple perspectives – If you and I describe the same thing differently, both of our interpretations will be taken into consideration.
Folksonomy disadvantages:
Despite the obvious benefits, it is important to be aware of some common problems.
Despite the obvious benefits, it is important to be aware of some common problems.
Over tagging – If people become obsessive taggers and place too many tags on content, the search method may become inefficient- recall would be high but precision would be low.
Inconsistency – People’s misspellings, different choices of punctuation and variations in spelling will all still be displayed as different tags. Individual tags lack precision and there is no ability to control synonyms or related terms. In addition, many social software tools take different approaches to tags composed of multiple words resulting in even more variations.
Skewed perspective – Research shows that there is a dense group within every online community that contributes the majority of tags. Also, everyone has different perceptions about what they are reading.
Lack of control – With social tagging, users can inappropriately tag content e.g. users can tag company content with negative terms.
For those of you who need to design an information system- it is worthwhile taking a look at these articles:
With regards to the corporate environment, there is much potential for a hybrid of these two systems. Stephanie Lemieux of Early and Associates suggests that "user tagging can help refine corporate taxonomy". Arguably the clever manipulation of both systems will alleviate the majority of disadvantages between them.
For those of you who need to design an information system- it is worthwhile taking a look at these articles:
With regards to the corporate environment, there is much potential for a hybrid of these two systems. Stephanie Lemieux of Early and Associates suggests that "user tagging can help refine corporate taxonomy". Arguably the clever manipulation of both systems will alleviate the majority of disadvantages between them.
I really like this quote by information architect Jay Feinberg-
If your interested, a more comprehensive analysis of the possibilities of a hybrid system can be found on Toby Ward's blog.
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