Collaborative Knowledge Gardening
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 larger community. Unknown benefits might accrue to you and others (see a newer article by Jon Udell that demonstrates aligning your personal taxonomy with the folksonomy).
What'll be really interesting is to see if a common "tag library" starts to be built up across services. Who knows what wonders we'll see then?