http://www.burningdoor.com/eric/archives/000707.html Comments and trackbacks for the entry "Collaborative Knowledge Gardening" en-us eric@burningdoor.com eric@burningdoor.com Mon, 30 Aug 2004 09:42:14 CDT The Net Movable Type v3.14 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://www.burningdoor.com/eric/archives/000707.html Nice article that talks about categorization schemes in both flickr and del.icio.us. They both use very similar mechanisms ... they're called tags. And it couldn't be simpler ... you just type in a bunch of space-separated words into an input field and viola, your photo (or link) is associated with those categories. Seems almost too simple, doesn't it? Well, here's why it works:Couldn't be easier to create and assign categories to an item. No "Create new category" dialog box you have to create, no "assign categories" multi-select list box ... just type 'em in. It'll create the categories if they don't exist. Easy to edit and reassign categories. Both services provide all the tools to maintain your growing taxonomy ... easily merge categories (in case you have categories for both "Internet" and "web", for example), easily modify the categories assigned to an item. This is really the key to an effective service: provide the gardening tools. Compare with a publicly evolving taxonomy, which has been coined "folksonomy". There are some wonderful examples of evolving taxonomies that are being created organically rather than dictated. If you care, you can make your personal taxonomy reflect the larger scheme and participate in the... http://www.burningdoor.com/eric/archives/000707.html 707@http://www.burningdoor.com/eric/ Mon, 30 Aug 2004 09:42:14 CDT Dancing About Architecture