The term was
coined by Thomas Vander Wal in 2004. It is the taxonomy which the
folk ascribe to a collection of things by means of tagging.
The actual
folksonomy, of course, is a form of ontology. But it is one which
is not formally specified in the rigid way ontologies normally are, and
which is by its very nature, dynamic.
It may very well
be the case that nobody is ever aware of the totality of a
folksonomy. Quite apart from the potential for scale problems, the
chances are that someone else will be contributing to the folksonomy, and
possibly subtly changing some of the emergent meanings in it, while you
focus on a different area.
So is a folksonomy
useful to us? I would say it is - it may be too large, and too
dynamic, for us to really be able to get a complete handle on it, but in
addition to the formal links made by people tagging, it allows us to see
elements of the identities of the community members, by the way they tag,
by the choices they make in what other tagged items they look at.
By whether they continue on one topic for a long time, or switch between
them.
There is a rich
source of information in the tag clouds of a social bookmarking site near
you - and it is all waiting to be mined and analysed. Of course,
the big worry is that it will be used for the wrong purposes - instead of
creating real knowledge it may just be used for marketing. From
this perspective, it may be worth maintaining segragation of elements of
your digital identity.
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Folksonomical
Relating to folksonomy - eg a folksonomical filing system is
one which uses or supports the use of social tagging to deliver the
required files to the user.
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Folksonomological
The study of folksonomies. The term folksonomological reification
refers to our groups work in reifying the study of folksonomies.
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