Gene Smith / 2008-05-01 00:00:00

It??™s Social
The social aspects of tagging are arguably the most interesting.
Del.icio.us introduced the idea that classification could simultaneously be a personal
and collaborative process. This is, in fact, a significant change from the past where
classification systems??”from the Library of Congress right down to the navigation
labels for a Web site??”were centralized. Del.icio.us also upset the widely held belief
that centralization and control went hand in hand with utility.
Librarians, information architects, developers, and other professionals who create classification
systems are quick to point out that they have always consulted their users
and considered the overall usability of their systems. Fair enough.
What makes tagging different is that every user is helping to shape a consensus around
the content of the thing that??™s being tagged. Tags allow individuals to describe a resource
in their own way. Through the most popular tags, we can see a kind of rough consensus
on the subject of the resource.
Read more

Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16