Taxonomy is a word that I have always disliked. I understand it's a vital area if you work in a
museum. But for a while it became a buzz word that people used to make simple tasks sound important.
Folksonomy is a different matter altogether. It's a derivation that refers to large Open Source communities organising huge amounts of data by everyone carrying out very small tasks. It's being referred to as 'tagging' at the moment and del.icio.us and Flickr are using it to great effect.
It's a great example of a bigger online trend ie very simple tools being put in the hands of hundreds of thousands of people, who can then go on and undertake massive tasks that even major corporations would struggle with, or at least find very expensive and unwieldy. Or in other words, the Open Source Movement!
You know, I've always felt that whether or not a Fijian lemur is part of the genus lepidoptera is far less important to my daily well being than whether travel insurance is listed under "servicing", "my account" or "about us" ;-)
Nothing wrong with taxonomies, I wish more companies built sensible ones online--whether they build them internally or open source them...
On a different topic entirely, have you seen the AdAge piece on the 25K Sony / lifehaker thing?
Posted by: Dug Falby | February 07, 2005 at 02:16 AM