[myNetWords.com] : Folksonomie

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Folksonomie

Mise à jour : samedi 4 décembre 2010

A folksonomy is a system of indexing your online content (web pages, blog posts, photos and so on) based on a free choice of keywords or tags. It’s another of those terms that’s a composite of two existing words : “folk” and “taxonomy” (which is the science of classification). It goes against the established grain of expert classification systems (hence the “folk”), in that ordinary people decide how blogs and websites should be classified, and which key words or tags to use with them. Take MyNetWords as an example : you might classify it under “dictionary”, while someone else would put it under “web critic’s blog” or even “LOL website”.

There are two advantages to a folksonomy. Theoretically, you are more likely to be able to retrieve a piece of information (a file) in your personal online storage system if you have filed it according to a system you devised yourself. Also, you will be able to share your “archived resources” with other internet users. You can do this by filing or indexing the material on one of the dedicated “bookmarking” sites or blogs, such as Delicious. Sites of this type are in fact based on a system of folksonomy. You go to the website, find the blog you want, and file it under a key word, “dictionary” for example, which enables you to find it again easily, and share it with other members of Delicious. A member of Delicious can then type “dictionary” and find all the blogs and websites filed under that key word – including, naturally, MyNetWords.

The term “folksonomy” is starting to become more established, though other terms are sometimes used, such as “popular indexing”, “cooperative classification” or “grassroots classification”.

The concept of folksonomy is gaining in popularity, as it is a way of redressing the balance of power in favour of internet users and away from the experts, Google and the like. When you type a key word into Google, the search engine selects the websites and blogs that get the most hits. That doesn’t mean those are necessarily the most relevant sites to what you are looking for. It’s the law of the survival of the fittest : the most popular sites come out on top. In a folksonomy, you decide how to index a site, and you apply your own approach to the choice of key words to use. If other internet users do the same, together you will create an indexation system based on your own interests and your own approach. That said, tags are probably not so easy to share. Our way of thinking isn’t necessarily the same as other people’s. You might use a key word like “crazy” for something you find amusing, but to another person it will suggest a pathological condition. The problem is the meaning you give to the tag. Two users can share the same tag and both give it different meanings. And, when you add spelling mistakes to the mix, the whole thing starts to get out of control : how do you search for a site using a mis-spelled tag ? You might well come round to the view, in the end, that the Google system, for all its faults, is more reliable. Unless, possibly, you are trying to create a community based on strong shared interests, with people who speak the same language and have the same frame of reference, and are therefore more likely to be able to understand each other’s tags.