Group items tagged

there is no shelf, and that there is no file system. Google can decide what goes with what after hearing from the user, rather than trying to predict in advance what it is you need to know.

the semantics here are in the users, not in the system.

It's all dependent on human context

A user on Flickr, Andrew Lowosky, began posting pictures of doorbells in Florence, along with a brief piece of fiction about the doorbell in the description of the photograph. He dubbed this combination of photograph and short story “flicktion,” and tagged it as such. (Lowosky, 2004.) Some other users have been tagging photographs with “flicktion” and writing short fiction to accompany it

the most used tags are more likely to be used by other users since they are more likely to be seen

A folksonomy represents simultaneously some of the best and worst in the organization of information. Its uncontrolled nature is fundamentally chaotic, suffers from problems of imprecision and ambiguity that well developed controlled vocabularies and name authorities effectively ameliorate. Conversely, systems employing free-‍form tagging that are encouraging users to organize information in their own ways are supremely responsive to user needs and vocabularies, and involve the users of information actively in the organizational system. Overall, transforming the creation of explicit metadata for resources from an isolated, professional activity into a shared, communicative activity by users is an important development that should be explored and considered for future systems development.

carefully preview any sites before sharing materials in the classroom with students!