The video showing the sisters tagging everything was perfect! It not only demonstrated tagging, but also showed the ambiguities, and POV of different folks. Granted, tagging doesn’t strive to define topics, exactly—so Blue and Door, very different concepts, on the same object make perfect sense. And both are useful tags for people looking up each of those examples.
The discussion tab of the wikipedia article on Folksonomy was more fun than the article itself—in many ways it demonstrates (more pedantically) the same points as the video with the sisters. Ironic, I think.
As a professional “disambiguator”, I am extremely aware of the ease with which different concepts may share the same tag, and similar concepts can share varyingly precise synonyms. A few years ago the Library of Congress subject heading folks worked hard on making vernacular terms for vegetables and fruits all plural. Apples, not Apple ; potatoes, not potato. Then, there’s broccoli. Inherently plural, I think. And Kiwifruit. The large number of words in English, and oddities of our language and usage make total consistency very difficult, even if you’re striving for it. And we are all aware of the weaknesses of LCSH. Any controlled system in English will have weaknesses—again, because of the size of number of words we have, some with very nuanced meanings. “Cat is Cat” doesn’t even hold true-- To some, cat may mean the big cats—Lions, or wild cats (i.e.—pumas); whereas to others it may mean Siamese, Persian, or “Puss.” I was well grown before I knew that “Polecat” or “Pole cat” was a skunk; from early westerns and cartoons, I knew it was a human scoundrel.
Additionally, reading is often subjective—that’s why Reader’s advisory is not an exact science. When a customer wants a book “like” Harry Potter”, do they mean fantasy? Magic? Boarding schools? England? Smart female characters? Or something else entirely. Tags added to the Rowling books could include any or all of those topics.
And they’d be correct. Time and money prevent all of those tags being added by catalogers (who can’t read every word of everything they catalog) . Nonfiction is also subjective. Each reader may find something different about any given book. Think about the Covey’s Seven Habits…; then think about the many words you could use to describe either the book as a whole, or the parts that were most significant to you. Yours may differ from mine, in both my roles as cataloger and reader. Neither is wrong.
My point? There’s a place in the online environment for both folksonomy (or uncontrolled, user supplied vocabulary) and controlled vocabulary. Both have strengths and weaknesses—some amazingly alike.
My experience with Del.icio.us at VBPL_L2 is too limited to comment on—there aren’t enough tags, etc. to see full value. Even when I looked at the “other people”, it wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped. HOWEVER- the tutorial by Kathleen Gilroy (plus the long presentation by Jason Griffey) did start me thinking about uses of Del.icio.us for general reference and personal use. Think of how great this would be for quick answers to persistent questions—or some teacher’s current homework stumper. Since it’s available to anyone with an account, then tagging for: (topic) would make it very useful. As mentioned in at least one of the resources—more accessible and useful than a personal “favorites” list, because it can travel to whichever computer you’re on.
For personal use: The same traveling advantage, plus you can build an extended list of articles and urls with topics you’re interested in. Favorites lists quickly become unmanageable, even with folders. Tagging may make it easier to organize.
This is what really grabbed me, and helped me understand the folksonomy promise/premise:
Tags and folksonomies are created from the wisdom of crowds—when a large enough people tag, a folksonomy is created.
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