Today I was reading content in a folksonomic site. For reference Wikipedia defines a folksonomy as "an Internet-based information retrieval methodology consisting of collaboratively generated, open-ended labels that categorize content such as Web pages, online photographs, and Web links.
A folksonomy is most notably contrasted from a taxonomy in that the authors of the labelling system are often the main users (and sometimes originators) of the content to which the labels are applied. The labels are commonly known as tags and the labelling process is called tagging." Interestingly some of the content had been tagged in a complete different way than I would have done. This lead me to think about the consequences of folksonomic sites. For example readers may categorise content in any way they want, which may or may not be logical or appropriate, which in turn may or may not lead to other readers finding that content or not.
When the reader is human this is not so much of a deal because the human brain can make qualitative judgements about re-tagging content differently in their own personal folksonomy. However a web spider’s brain is not capable of such "grey" judgements. It sees what it is told to see by tagging and uses its algorithm to interpret. The question is therefore with the potential for so much content with different, inaccurate or just plain crazy tagging is the future for natural searches bright or is it doomed by the chaos of the human brain.
