Content Sharing: Folksonomies

What do you think of folksonomies as a way of organizing information?

 

I agree with Weinberger’s argument that folksonomies are needed today in order to give the Western tradition of essentialism a good “kick in the teeth”. As Weinberger explains “Essentialism says that of all the ways of understanding a thing, one is its real way” (Weinberger 2006), while folksonomies (created by everyone and anyone) allow for a broader understanding of meanings. Therefore both the top down models of essentialism (such as dictionary meanings or library catalogues) and the grass roots models of folksonomies (created by tagging) are needed in order to create balance in the way information is organized and categorized. As such information is made searchable and findable for the layperson and the professional alike in both online and offline environments.

Is it free of bias or only useful to those who share a similar vocabulary?

No, I don’t think any form of information categorization can be truly unbiased, and as many other people have pointed out folksonomies are only useful to those who share a vocabulary. Different languages, different cultures and even generational gaps can cause the understanding of the meanings of words, to alter from person to person, although I do not think that folksonomies should be totally written off as a way for information categorization. As Mathes states the feedback a user receives after tagging an item is “ immediate .As soon as you assign a tag to an item, you see the cluster of items carrying the same tag. If that’s not what you expected, you’re given incentive to change the tag or add another.” (Mathes 2004)Therefore although people create their own categorization tags, they have the opportunity to fine tune the tagging to match that of the broader community, allowing for some general consensus, should the participant choose to partake in this part of the process.

Mathes, A.(2004). Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata. Computer Mediated Communication - LIS590CMC Retrieved from http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html

Weinberger, D.(2006). Folksonomy as a Symbol. Retrieved from http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_40430_1%26url%3D