contentious.com

Tagging (the process of informally categorizing chunks of online content with user-defined labels, aided by various online tools or services) is surprisingly controversial.

Some people adore it and tag everything they find; others disdain its lack of formality or reliability; and most people either experiment with it sporadically or ignore it entirely.

This morning I stumbled across a thoughtful exploration of tagging from someone who is not enamored with the process or results. Check out “Folksonomy Recapitulates Ontology.” Despite its leaden title, this article offers a fairly plain-language and fair examination of the pros and cons of tagging.

Here’s my response to that article…

I just posted the following comment to that article:

Excellent article, and quite thought-provoking.

I agree, tagging is far from perfect, comprehensive, or universal. I agree that it tends to be something that some people (though not necessarily just early adopters, IMHO) tend to do assiduously; while others do it randomly. In my experience, some people are more inclined than others to tagging habits and the tagging mindset. These tend to be the people who realize some direct benefit from tagging, or who view their tagging efforts as the creation of a unique body of work.

This is the case with my tagging efforts. I use two regularly: Furl and Del.icio.us. Furl I use because it stores a searchable copy of anything I bookmark there, which I find useful for my work. I tag things in Furl not so much with the purpose of sharing, but rather for categorizing in relation to the projects I’m working on. Del.icio.us is where I tag for sharing. It’s how I create my list of recommended reading links in the sidebar of my weblog Contentious.com

If I didn’t view these efforts as the creation of unique bodies of work and if I didn’t realize benefits from them, I probably wouldn’t bother. Just tagging for the sake of tagging isn’t enough for me. For others, it is.

However, I also realize benefits from the tagging efforts of others in two ways: It helps me identify opinion leaders or experts; and sheer serendipity.

Opinion leaders play a huge and important role on the net. They create most of the value you find online. To me, it doesn’t really matter that most of what’s available online is disorganized crap – the opinion leaders and experts are the ones who create the jewels, and they make the whole chaotic scramble worthwhile.

Serendipity is the other key to value on the net. Exploring others’ tags often leads me to surprising discoveries. I think it complements the search focus in a surprisingly useful way. I think of tag exploration as “focused randomness.” It tends to provide relevant serendipity.

At least, that’s my experience of it. I’m not disappointed that tagging isn’t as comprehensive, reliable, or meticulous as taxonomy. It serves different – and complementary – purposes.

And even though, from the perspective of some people, tagging serves little or no purpose – well, it’s easily ignored. So it doesn’t really hurt anything, does it?