Talk:Folksonomy/Archive 1

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Steve Rubel (January 16, 2005). "Get Folksy With Folksonomies". WebProNews.

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Nick Wilson (March 10, 2005). "Playing Tagsy - Folksonomies, Firefox & Search". WebProNews.

This article was nominated for deletion on 7 July 2005. The result of the discussion was keep.

An in depth article about categorization could contain this information under a more suitable title, and I'm not convinced that this word is in wide enough usage (yet) that wikipedia should promote its further use with an article by this name. I am not going to list this for VfD myself, but if someone else does, I would support it. ~leif ☺ _HELO 02:01, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hey! This sounds like original research!

Hey! I thought: no original research allowed on Wikipedia.

And it's not fair to just write a blog entry somewhere, and then link to that.

But we'd like to have authoritative, knowledgable people, writing here. But only about things that are factual; Not their own insights or thoughts into a matter.

The fact that this neologism has been appropriated by hundreds of writers, who agree that it describes a new and interesting phenomenon on the Internet, elevates this term far beyond the category of individual research.Bryan 03:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The definition of "Taxonomy" is confusing.

'Taxonomy is from "taxis" and "nomos" (from Greek). Taxis means classification. Nomos (or nomia) means management.'

Taxonomy says "from the words taxis = order and nomos = law".

From the article: So "folksonomy" literally means "people's classification management". I'm not a specialist in Greek, but I fail to see how Folksonomy can "literally" mean "people's classification management" without "taxis" in there. --Ben 20:52, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is an ironic term. It refers to people's disorderly and unsystematic classification schemes that break all the rules of formal classification, but in a way that provides useful information to Internet users.Bryan 03:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

wikipedia category system

Shouldn't the Wikipedia category system get a mention here, since we are at the forefront of folksonomies? :81.156.107.201 14:38, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think this is a good suggestion - can you add it? Bryan 03:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

added another example of a music site with a folksonomy

upto11.net is a new music recommendations site that employs user tags and leverages P2P-user music collections as the basis for recommendations. Articles about musical artist, albums and songs from the Wikipedia are also integrated, including links on each page that encourage our users to add to / edit those articles at the Wikipedia. Thought it added a unique new example of a music recommendations site that uses a folksonomy. I'm one of the founders. --Dsupto11 03:34, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an internet directory

...so I am being bold and removing the examples section as well as the links in the external references which are nothing more than sites which use a folksonomy, or a dynamic list of folksonomy links. Chuck 18:18, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

What? C'mon. We're talking about a few good examples! If you came across this concept, wouldn't you want to visit a few sites that exemplified folksonomy? Bryan 03:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Mea culpa. Just looked at your change, you're right. Sorry! Bryan 03:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I got here in search for examples. And they are gone! There is a List of search engines. Why not a list of Folksonomies?! Where should one look for examples? If i'd be a normal user, this is what I'd like to see first!

Big words != Smart

If I have to look up the words portmanteau and neologism, then they dont belong in the summary. I took them out and replaced them with something a bit more readable.

The best writing is the writing that can be easily understood by anybody.

Thank you. --jonsafari 04:39, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A few big words now and then aren't such a bad thing

Dear Anonymous who doesn't like big words: I agree with you 100%. I like clear, readable prose too. Still, think of a young reader who comes across this word, and thinks that it has been used since the time of the Greeks. It IS a neologism -- or, as Wikipedians prefer to call such things, a portmanteau word.

Look, this is an encyclopedia. Big words are to be expected. If they are linked, you can click the link and learn the word. That is what encyclopedias are FOR -- learning. Please do not remove words you do not understand unless you believe the the discussion could be improved by using a simpler word. Bryan 03:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

New definition

Let me explain my changes in the first paragraph. The term "folksonomy" was coined by a very, very smart guy named Thomas Vander Wal. Many people have found his definition of folksonomy useful, and it has been widely adopted. The trouble is, Vander Wal didn't think much of the way this page used to define it:

Vanderwal's take on Wikipedia's poor definition of his concept -- required reading for anyone making edits here.

His definition of the concept (which I have tried to restore to this page) beautifully captures the social and personal dimensions of folksonomic classification -- categories that we associate with an online personae and, if we find them congenial, inspire a search for similarly tagged objects. The following explains the concept pretty well:

Picking up where search leaves off

Bryan 11:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's taken a while, I know, but I finally got around to updating the introduction to fully deal with Vander Wal's criticisms. It's important that the introduction contains the paragraph about the connection between tags and online personae.Bryan 19:57, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with folksonomies

I've had a first stab at a critical section in this article. Please feel free to edit and develop, I'm just concerned the article doesn't mention some of the potential problems that folksonomies may create. I am sure some great and good have written measured critques that should be referenced? (Mark Gaved 19 November)

This is really a valuable contribution! We're still in the hype phase of folksonomy... and I haven't seen any literature that questions the concept. I think the most fundamental criticism would be that it seems to be incompatible with the notion of a semantic Web, in which there are machine-readable indices on every Web page that specify their "aboutness." Any formal taxonomy of Web page subject matter would have to deal, inevitably, with the ambiguities of natural language. Also, user-generated categories seem vulnerable to search engine optimization dysfunctions; in the quest for limited Web attention, should I not tag my page on butterfly collecting with categories such as "oral sex"? (incorporate any of this into this section as you please). Best wishes Bryan 23:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

cheers Brian. I used to be a librarian and sometimes had to unpick other people's folksonomies to help users (the usual "Dutch/Netherlands/Holland" synonym issues ) so I am a little sceptical of purely folksonomic approaches, but I am sure some more measured writings have been made and it would be great to see them summarised. You say there isn't any lit criticising folksonomies, would it exist within library ad information science literature under the guise of justifications for clear classification systems? Here I am now a PhD student in a University department that focuses on the Semantic Web [[1]] but I'm mainly a grassroots appropriation of technology guy so came at this topic from references to grassroots capture of knowledge! ....I'm not sure I get your reference to buttterfly collecting / oral sex though! (Mark Gaved)

The point is, if I have a boring page (butterflly collecting), I can tag it any way I want, including with something that might bring curious visitors. I really don't know of any literature of any kind on folksonomy -- it's too new to have made its way into the journals. Somebody out there must be studying it, though! Say hello, please, if you are. Bryan 21:09, 23 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I added a reference to a nice paper by Scott Golder and Bernardo Huberman on tagging that is being published next year and mentioned a few of the problems they identified. Personally however, I am not convinced these are really problems but rather illustrative the awesome flexibility of tagging.

Tag based categorization doesn't preclude a taxonomy; it works in parallel to offer another way to sort the same objects. The idea isn't to organize a library with tags, but rather to for each reader to apply tags to books as they read them. If enough readers tag enough books, exciting wisdom-of-crowds action will result. Golder and Huberman found that tags can show stability after as few as 30 taggers. User:Graypriest November 25, 2005

thanks for this Graypriest. I'll try to find some references on problems of retrieval: I want to believe in folksonomies but the "awesome flexibility of tagging" in my experience as a librarian translated to 'user frustration at not being able to find anything'. (Mark Gaved).

Wikipedia's categories = folksonomy?

I've been trying to think my way through this question: Are Wikipedia's categories a form of folksonomy? I think they are, but they masquerade as controlled vocabularies, which is potentially misleading. I would really like to hear from somebody who has been involved in Wikipedia's categories effort on this. Bryan 23:21, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reversion of (some) lead paragraph edits

Folksonomy is a portmanteau word: "A portmanteau (plural: portmanteaux) is a word that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more words. It can also be called a frankenword (incidentally, this is another example of a portmanteau). The term used in linguistics is blend (see the section linguistics below)." Could also be termed a neologism, but either is better than "spin." Bryan

Well,

First time I have found a topic I had never heard of browsing on wp...--BozMo talk 15:45, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Examples and 'How to roll your own'

Seems to me that this article is very exciting, but leads nowhere. My unanswered questions are:

Where do I find a *good* example of how this is done? The article mentions several sites using the notion of 'social tagging' or 'folksonomy' - how about providing clear links to them? Or better, a clear and clickable link to the purest single example?

Fair comment. I've added two links in the first paragraph of the article. --mgaved 10:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do I provide a folksonomy service for users on my site?

yoyo 23:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spam

There are unrelated external links labeled "Security" added February 4 by 217.17.167.99 . Please revert someone who knows how to do.

Thanks for spotting it. I see the same IP has spammed some other articles aswell, and will take a look to see if some of the links are still left. To remove spam like this you can just edit the page or section and remove them. It's as easy as that. Thanks again! Shanes 14:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That was fast! Hope the link to talkinghub forum I've added will be considered as content related. Because it does related.

Wrong take on Dublin Core

Dublin Core (DC) is not a controlled vocabulary for defining subjects. DC is a set of tags for assigning properties such as *title*, *description*, *creator* and so on. A controlled vocabulary, in the sense that would be relevant for a discussion of folksonomies, is a set of tag values which could be used inside the DC *subject* field. So the previous contributor confused the DC elements with the possible content of one of those elements. A good example of a controlled vocabulary is the Library of Congress Subject Headings.

Excellent point - may I suggest that you go right ahead and make changes to an article when you can see that there's an obvious error? Your contributions are welcome.Bryan 19:27, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Approximation?

I have seen this on the article :"nomos (or nomia) means "management"." . I think it is quite approximative. "Regulation" would be more accurate.

March 24 2006 changes

The changes logged from 128.143.168.21 were mine -- while I was working on the article, it seems, my login expired.Bryan 19:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

point of view / criticisms of folksonomies

The criticism portion of the article starts with arguments against criticisms. Arguments for controlled vocabularies are better explained on the controlled vocabulary page.

I agree, the "criticism section" I set up feels to have developed so as to cover more than just criticism of the folksonomies. I still think it's important that there should be a critical section so I've moved out the paragraph which started the amended section (arguments against criticisms) to the "benefits" section. I've moved out the last paragraph to its own section -"Potential compromise between folksonomies and top-down taxonomies". Just a quick structural change, it may need further tidying... (and improving!) --mgaved 16:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is Flickr a Folksonomy?

Does Flickr allows users to tag other's photos? I haven't found a way. If no, should we name Flickr as just "tagging"?

Well there is a way but Flickr tagging system differs alot from del.icio.us tagging system - so I would suggest to name techniques with different terms.

Denis Krukovsky

http://blogoforum.com/

If anyone is interested, I found Wanderwal thoughts on this at http://www.vanderwal.net/random/entrysel.php?blog=1781 .

NetInsert blurb

Orkwan insists on including this in the article. In fact, for a whole month that's the only thing his user has been occupied with. To me, this is obviously spamming, but when I removed it referring to WP:EL, he reverted with "Amended vandalism by malicious user". I have no interest in a revert war, so could other people please comment on this? Haakon 08:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moreover, the service in question has nothing to do with folksonomy. NetInsert authors may re-read Vanderwal writings on what is folksonomy. Denis Krukovsky, Blogoforum