jason

Folksonomy folktales (found via Sylvie’s post)

In reviewing articles about folksonomies and taxonomies, I found that while there were some interesting experiments in combining the two, most writings repeated the same myths, folktales and misconceptions.

A fundamental flaw in the vast majority of articles on folksonomies and taxonomies is the almost universal use of the Dewey Decimal System (or Library of Congress Subject Headings) as the example taxonomy. Using the Dewey Decimal System as your example taxonomy shows that you have no understanding of taxonomy creation and use in today’s world.

It’s as if you did an analysis of boats and picked the Titanic as your example. It’s really big and cumbersome, and it’s made of brittle steel held together with bad rivets. It costs too much and is too difficult to build. It’s slow and hard to steer, runs into icebergs and kills lots of people.

But wait, sailboats are boats too, and they are much smaller, cheaper, easier to build and lots of fun. And you know what, there are lots of taxonomies that are smaller than the Dewey Decimal System, easier to construct and use, less rigid, have built-in revision procedures and user input capabilities, and generally don’t suffer from all those “characteristics” of taxonomies that folksonomy advocates love to list.

I usually ignore these big shiny new ways of making sense of the internet, or old ones. I just assumed that peeps were making lazy ad hoc definitions of things without taking them seriously. Ooops. I was wrong, they were taking them seriously. Silly peeps. As the article suggests, people, probably from watching too many power point presentations, didn’t apply a critical lens on the term and assumed it had depth and solidity without much more than a few slides to back it up. I never assumed it did, but some people… Just have to wonder.

Wonder what it is that I’m doing these days that is based on a taken-for-granted assumption that I’ve not explored… this time