As most of you are aware of there is a classification process that is used on the internet to organize information. Basically this classification process is used to help users find information that they are looking for as fast as possible. When it comes to this classification process there are numerous things that go into making up the entire process. The first thing that you need to know about is tags, which are basically the words that are used to describe the information you are posting on the internet. The next two things that you need to know about are folksonomy and top-down taxonomy, the reason why you need to know about both of these is that the two kind of work together to help you find information on the internet. Basically both top-down taxonomy and folksonomy are methods that are used to help categorize the information you find on the internet.

Let’s begin by first talking about taxonomy in general. Most of you have probably heard of the word taxonomy at some point in your life because it is a word that is used in numerous science classes. The reason for this is that taxonomy is a science, but unlike the study of living objects or chemicals taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming objects. Basically what happens with taxonomy is that the objects are identified and named and then are placed in different categories depending on their classification. So basically what this means is that taxonomy is used to place things into a certain order, basically to organize things.

Now that we understand about taxonomy we need to take a look at top-down taxonomy. Basically top-down taxonomy is an approach to taxonomy. With this approach you basically have one set of tags and one sort order that is used to help identify the information that you are looking for. One of the best examples of the top-down taxonomy approach is Yahoo!, which was one of the earliest general directories for content on the internet. Basically top-down taxonomy is a controlled vocabulary, which actually means that there are limitations on the tags that are used to describe the content that is being posted.

Now we need to take a look at folksonomy to be sure that we understand that method. Folksonomy is the method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. Basically folksonomy is using words that will help computer search engines to recognize your website and display it on a search engine results page in the proper category. Basically this is done through the use of tags or what other people refer to as key words. In fact folksonomy is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social tagging and numerous other names.

So as you can tell both folksonomy and top-down taxonomy have their uses on the internet. But the thing is that depending on who you talk to and what information you find on the internet you are going to get different opinions. Many people believe that folksonomy is actually better because it is not as restrictive. But regardless of what people think of as the better system and no matter how many differences they quote the truth of the matter is that there are some differences, but there are more similarities between the two systems than there are differences. In fact many people tend to think that the best possible solution would be to make some new kind of method that combined these two methods together. One of these would be taxonomy-directed-folksonomy which would rely on the user interface to suggest tags from a formal taxonomy, but allows many users to use their own tags.

I thought this morning I’d point out a few new tagging features over at SharingLinks.com.

First, for those not familiar with the project, here’s a quickie overview. SharingLinks.com is a social bookmarking project for educators and parents and anyone interested in educational use of the Internet. The purpose is to “share” our bookmarks and great site finds by posting them at the site. In a nutshell, the entire experiment is dependent on “tags” which are keyword phrases that each user adds to their shared bookmarks.

Okay .. now here’s a sneak peek at one of new tag enhancements at SharingLinks: in addition to the boolean “AND” operator, we now also have a boolean “OR.” Or, if you prefer, we have union as well as intersection. Here are some examples.

First we have all bookmarks tagged “keyboarding”
http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/keyboarding

Then we look in the Related Tags box in the upper-right of the page, and we see tags such as typing, keyboard, games, alphabet, and so on. Clicking on any the tags, will bring up a list of the the bookmarks so tagged. But notice the + and |. These are our boolean operators “and” and “or” respectively.

Noticing that some users use the tag “typing” INSTEAD of “keyboarding” .. we get a more comprehensive listing of bookmarks by looking at those that are tagged EITHER “keyboarding” or “typing”. We get here by clicking on the | symbol next to the tag “typing”.
http://www.sharinglinks.com/tags/keyboarding|typing

As I was penning next week’s batch of website reviews for my Surfnetkids.com site, the idea of “calling for links” popped into my head. Here’s what I mean:

Next week’s column (dated February 20) will be about Women’s History Month (which actually is March.) And I figured that my SharingLinks members would know about lots of sites that I didn’t . And wouldn’t it be great if we could share our discoveries for the benefit of everyone?

So .. here it is … a call (or plea!) for you to peruse the Internet and/or your own personal stash of links for those
pertaining to Women’s History Month … add them to your bookmarks at SharingLinks.com.

The sites can be about individual women, the women’s rights movement, women’s history, women’s suffrage, or any sub-topic that interests you (such as women artists, women scientists, etc!) The beauty of the tagging system is that we each build our own link collections and organize them as we wish.

Popular tags that already being used are:

women’s history, biography, history, social studies, educational stuff, suffrage, women

If you’d like a refresher on how to add links (my favorite way is with the SharingLinks plugin), you’ll find lots of help:

1) on the SharingLinks site

2) on the SharingLinks blog

In closing, I promise I will NOT be sending an email every week to call for links on a new topic, but if this little experiment is popular, I will definitely do it again!

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

I rambled a bit about tagging, community, Web 2.0, folkosonomy and Sharing Links over at my BarbaraFeldman.com blog, and thought I should post an excerpt here as well:

Today’s rambling is about tags, folksonomy, and the sharing of knowledge. This is a topic that is both completely simple (a “tag” is a user-created label or keyword) and complex at the same time. If all users are creating their own tags (or labels or categories) .. then how do we find a common ground to share information or knowledge?

During the loosely defined Web 2.0 evolution, users stepped up to share in the online conversation. And user input (with votes, tags, and knowledge) became more important than the one-to-many publishing model. Business books with titles such as “The Wisdom of the Crowds,” “Wikinomics” and “We are Smarter than Me” began spouting the knowledge of the many.

It was in this spirit that I created Sharing Links, a place for educators to share their knowledge in the form of bookmarks and tags. The site is still in “Beta” because it is not yet finished in a technical sense, nor in a community sense. During the first few months of 2008, however, will I will be unfolding some new and pretty exciting next steps. …. click to continue.