(2005-01-18) Bray What Do Tags Mean

Tim Bray: What Do Tags Mean? I’m almost convinced that this new Technorati Tags thing is important, but I’m 100% convinced that I don’t understand where it’s going or what the implications are. Which is OK, because I suspect nobody else does either.

On Metadata · I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about metadata and have written on the subject; the most important conclusion was: There is no cheap metadata. I haven’t seen anything to make me change my mind.

For a different, and very fresh, spin on the same proposition, see Clay Shirky’s folksonomies + controlled vocabularies

Having said that, and granting the proposition that The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work usually wins, I still have to say that the Technorati Tags all being in a single flat namespace does seem a little, well, brittle.

Bottom line: I suspect Technorati, and anyone else who takes this up, should offer an (optional) “scheme” field in their tag search capability, which would be handy for those who care and invisible for those who don’t.