PUBLIC MARKS from fredbird with tags tags & folksonomy

Ontologies are enabling technology for the Semantic Web. They are a means for people to state what they mean by formal terms used in data that they might generate or consume. Folksonomies are an emergent phenomenon of the social web. They are created as people associate terms with content that they generate or consume. Recently the two ideas have been put into opposition, as if they were right and left poles of a political spectrum. This piece is an attempt to shed some cool light on the subject, and to preview some new work that applies the two ideas together to enable an Internet ecology for folksonomies

In recent times, an unprecedented amount of Web content has begun to be generated through web logs, wikis and other social tools thanks to lower technology and cost barriers. A new host of content creators is emerging, often individuals with the will to participate in discussions and share their ideas with like-minded people. This is to say that this increasing amount of varied, valuable content is generated by non-trained, non-expert information professionals: they are at the same time users and producers of information.

Had some conversations about tag disambiguation with people at work and in the pub yesterday (that’s right folks - I’m lots of fun to go drinking with). Stu reminded me that in the del.icio.us tagging folksonomy world, people are able to choose meaning by social convention - i.e. they see which tags people are using for what sort of things, and then choose an appropriate one for their needs (maybe to get the biggest audience).

an experimental forum (bulletin board) using a flat hierarchy (tags)