Common discussions on Folksonomies
January 17, 2005 at 9:02 PM
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Thomas Vander Wal has authored a great post entitled Folksonomy Explanations which covers the commonly discussed questions and issues surrounding folksonomies. I would like to see some even more in-depth discussion about the topic of folksonomies and their practical integration into a typical corporate site that doesn't provide community features at the moment (or at least to a lesser degree than Flickr or del.icio.us). Take for example Epicurious since everyone in the IA community loves their IA to some degree. Let's show some practical real-world examples that could exist out site of the uber-geek / techy / blogger world.
Comments
Here's a point of discussion for you, but how do you actually pronounce 'Folksonomy'... it seems too much of a tongue twister for me makes me sound stupid infront of the bosses :(
Well, I would say it's base words are Folk as in people.. and Taxonomy. So taking the Tax side out of it and plugging in Folk at the start. folk-son-oh-me would be my best guess. Thomas?
One big difference between corporate sites and folksonomies is that folksonomies (OK, I'm talking about del.icio.us and flickr) are aggregating content from many domains, while corporations only have their own content in their one domain. An interesting question is: Why would people tag content within only one domain? Would someone go to digital-web.com and tag information there, or would they simply post it to their del.icio.us account and never go back to this domain unless they were re-reading it or looking for new stuff. The magic of folksonomies is that when someone is in their del.icio.us account, they're shown all sorts of relevant content *from other domains* that they wouldn't have discovered otherwise. I think the place where this aggregation happens (an outside, independent domain like del.icio.us) is not a fluke.
I guess I am thinking more along the lines of a socially contributed taxonomy. Like, taking Epicurious recopies and tagging each one. This would lend itself to various synonyms and such and help foster findability even more so than the built-in taxonomies that you find in-use when navigating the site today. So, ya, in my opinion there is a lot of benefits from having a Folksonomy for a single domain. That's the point of my post.
Sorry, Nick. I wasn't trying to say that there weren't any benefits: I'm just trying to figure out what they are. I think the question you brought up is very interesting, and I absolutely agree about finding more examples.
Joshua: no harm done, you're just raising questions that should be raised at this point. I am not the expert on this subject either, but I think collectively we can come up with some good answers. So thinking about this a little more and thinking of Digital Web as an example I know a lot about... I can see how a controlled vocabulary may tie in here as well. For example, if users could tag content that's already published and authors could tag content when they contribute it... we'd end up with articles that one user classifies as ...say, "markup" and another "XHTML" and another "HTML" and "XML" etc. Then someone else could tie it in with "web standards" ...there would have to be some kind of way to link that information that is only field under the bucket of XHTML with the stuff filed under the bucket of markup. I guess I am sort of thinking out loud here, but I could see how even a site like digital web could benefit from a folksonomy to some degree.
Joshua, in a large closed environment a folksonomy would make a ton of sense on an enterprise intranet. Whenever I have user tested intranets one of the things that pops up quickly is lack of broad understanding of terminology. Organizations have their own controlled vocabulary that is often top-down. This is often done to build a culture that speaks the same language in an effort to be more efficient and understand each other. Companies workforces are transient with people joining and leaving with greater frequency than in years and generations past. Implementing a folksonomy would allow people to keep track of the information they found by terms they understand. People using vocabulary they are familiar with will be able to find the information they need much faster. The folksonomy can be leverages so that others in the organization can benefit. The organization can benefit by harvesting the vocabulary used in the folksonomy to expand their controlled vocabulary or provide alternate paths to access information. This is something that should be incorporated in to all intranets and portals. I have also been seeing communities setup their own folksonomy tools and/or use existing ones to discover vocabulary and track information. Some in the non-profit community have been leveraging existing public folksonomy tools to build a taxonomy and controlled vocabulary. Getting this kind of information is usually expensive and has been very difficult to come by in the past.
vanderwal, didn't see your comments until just now...months later! I'm in full agreement with all that you said, and I wish I had seen this earlier, it would have saved me a lot of time. :)
