Folksonomy

This week I've tried to blog at least close to on topic, and so have chosen to talk about a short article from the November 2006 issue of D-Lib Magazine by Elaine Peterson entitled "Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy."

Peterson begins her article with a review of the foundations of traditional classification. She states that traditional catalogers are part of the Aristotelian tradition and adhere to the same basic principles of contraries, particulars, and categories. Of particular importance is the idea of contraries. In traditional cataloging, an item cannot be both "A" and "not A." A photograph of a single horse, for example, cannot be assigned the subject term "white horse" and the subject term "black horse." It must be one or the other. Additionally, the priority of the author's intent in traditional cataloging is another one of its distinguishing characteristics.

In a folksonomy, however, philosophical relativism is the underlying principle. Because of this, instead of it being impossible for an object to be both "A" and "not A," the assignment of tags is entirely up to the judgement of the individual. Therefore, it is possible for an object to be both one thing and its opposite. The reader has the priority in a folksonomy, rather than the author, and contrary interpretations can exist. As Peterson points out, "if all interpretations be of equal worth, [and] users can continuously add tags to articles, at some point it is likely that the whole system will become unusable." She likens it to the story of the Chinese emperor who wanted an accurate map of China, and ended up getting a map that was very accurate but was also the size of China. Such a thing is accurate, but not useful.

Peterson also points out that meta noise is another problem with folksonomies. Meta noise results from inaccurate, irrelevant, and even inadvertently erroneous (such as spelling "white horse" as "whit horse") tagging. She quotes David Weinberger, who views folksonomic classifications of the Web as "'messy and inelegant and inefficient, but it will be Good Enough.'" Peterson holds, however, that while it may be good to allow users to supply their own tags, the resulting classification system will not produce an efficient index, and so is not really all that good.

Overall, Peterson believes that inconsistencies within the folksonomic classification system will always exist. In traditional cataloging, there is a right way and a wrong way to classify something. This is not true with a folksonomy, and this, it seems Peterson believes, is its main problem that can cause the system to break down. "Folksonomists," she says, "are confusing cataloging structure with personal opinions." It is good to have personal opinions, and to be able to express them. However, opinions do not lead to effective classification, and therefore do not provide for effective searching.