LIS 9763

I wish there was a common craft video for folksonomies, I love those.

I wanted to say first and foremost, after reading some of the articles this week, I GET IT.  For the first time, I do get what a folksonomy is.  It's classification built from the ground-up, by many individuals just tagging things like we do here in lis9763.  I never really gave thought to the tag clouds, but they're really interesting and representative of what lots of people are doing and what people are thinking at any given time.

The beauty of folksonomy classification is something that I hadn't thought about before, which is that it is inclusive.  After taking cataloguing, it was clear that a stringent, top-down classification system will always leave gaps, will always leave groups or individuals out (let alone be straight up offensive to some?). Yet a folksonomy is created by the users themselves.

Of course, now that I understand folksonomy, I also understand the cons.  No synonyms (I love the example of filtering in the Adam Mathes article), no hierarchy of terms, and what's this?! We have to give up our control?! What will I do with my authority control button?  I guess the other concern is that you need to go from tagging to a folksonomy, and that takes effort from users and time. 

When I was at McMaster, I could have sworn that they had started to allow users to tag content in the Mills Library, but now I'm thinking I invented this idea, because I don't see it anymore.  However! The idea is interesting.  Looking at the case studies that have implemented some kind of tagging software, I have to wonder, how do they keep the annoying first years who think they're hilarious from messing with the tags?  I guess there must be some kind of filtering or monitoring.

I do love how you can click on this page at the University of Michigan and see a folksonomy.  The folksonomy of users where certain terms are obviously more popular. I think that's fascinating.  All in all, I think the idea is fantastic, especially when you think of it in terms of "power to the people".  I also think that I'd rather let users make their own classification than be expected to apply one standard system myself.  I'm not qualified for that!