On folksonomies: the good and the bad
[From January 2007 but I haven't noticed any progress:]
I heard a few months ago that folksonomies are at the top of the “hype curve” according to an IT industry analyst firm. That means they’re likely to dive in popularity, perhaps to regain a little and level off, if they are useful in the long term.
I’m hoping that major websites will come up with features to make folksonomies semi-controlled, so as to reap the benefits of immediate tag invention. I like it when software such as WordPress and del.icio.us helps me re-use tags I’ve already created, but that’s not universally available. I’d also like a thesaurus structure where I could link my tags to synonyms in other peoples’ tagging systems.
Automatic phrase-similarity checking might help with the punctuation problem! Not to mention the variations caused by taggers not knowing the pluralization rules in ANSI/NISO Z39.19.
