Folksonomy

According to Wikipedia, a folksonomy is:

a neologism for a practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords. More colloquially, this refers to a group of people cooperating spontaneously to organize information into categories. In contrast to formal classification methods, this phenomenon typically only arises in non-hierarchical communities, such as public websites, as opposed to multi-level teams and hierarchical organization. Since the organizers of the information are usually its primary users, advocates of folksonomy believe it produces results that reflect more accurately the population's conceptual model of the information.

The most popular political blog, Daily Kos, has just started going with this collaborative system of "tagging" blog diaries and comments, which will make it easier for people to find content that is useful for them.

In the past, the creator of a website could choose the keywords that were most meaningful for them, with educated guesses as to what those searching for the website would type into Google or other search engines. Now, with Folksonomy, everyone accessing the blog can add descriptive tags. I might tag a blog entry as "Valerie Plame" and "Joe Wilson," but you can add the tags "CIA," "Karl Rove," or "Scooter Libby" if you want to.

A recent article from Wired magazine offers these tips for tagging:

1. Use combinations of simple tags rather than inventing complex ones. For instance, use tags CIA, LEAK and INVESTIGATION, instead of CIA-LEAK-INVESTIGATION.


2. Use at least two tags for each item. More tags is better (up to a point).


3. Try to think of what tags people might use to search for something and use those. For example, PLAME, ROVE, FITZPATRICK, NOVAK, TREASON, OUTING, OPERATIVE might all be good tags for an entry on the Valerie Plame outing.


4. Try to re-use existing tags.


5. Keep it simple. Don't use tags that are redundant.

I guess as visitors start to add tags to your websites and blogs, you will see how others view your information and how it gets categorized in their minds. This sounds like the ultimate in feedback for writers, and a great way for politicos to see if their message is being received by their target audiences.