In Defence of Tags

I thought I’d done the virtues of tagging to death, here and here. But there’s still more and it involves references to Aristotle and Plato.

Anyone still reading? David Weinberger (of Cluetrain Manifesto fame) responds to a piece critical of the folksonomy, tagging approach to classification by Elaine Peterson in D-Lib magazine. I’ll paraphrase loosely.

Peterson gives several objections to using tags as a way of organising information, as opposed to the sharp distinctions and uncrossable boundaries maintained by pupils of Aristotle. The strongest criticism she levels at folksonomies is that:

Because tags are relativized, personal, idiosyncratic views can coexist and thrive in the form of tags, in spite of their inconsistencies. Readers of texts on the Internet become individual interpreters, despite the document author’s intent.

Weinberger points out that, uhm, yeah – that’s the point. The author’s original intent is not the end of what a particular artefact, web page, blog post, photograph, movie means.

You upload a picture of your car to flickr and tag it ‘car’. I come along and think ‘mmm purple’, and tag it as such. Now when someone else comes along looking for a purple car, they have an easier time of it. Maybe someone else arrives and thinks, ‘that’s not purple, it’s indigo’, and they add that too.

Contradictions, idiosyncracies… and it’s much easier to find that picture of an indigo car.

Weinberger finishes:

I’ll take one step further toward the metaphysical: Folksonomies are not only frequently more useful than top-down taxonomies; they better reflect the bottom-up, messy, ambiguous, inconsistent, social nature of meaning—despite Aristotle and the tradition his genius spawned.

(found via Euan Semple)

Possibly Related Posts:

• It’s a Tag World, My Masters
• Of Tags and Taxonomy
• Photos 2.0 Round-up

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