Our collective ability to create web content far outpaces our ability to find and retrieve it in a timely manner. Though many organizations have adopted rules for classifying and categorizing content, web users continue to complain about poor usability and ineffective search.

There are two popular approaches, one traditional, the other emerging, for categorizing content:

A - A corporately constructed, top-down taxonomy forced upon employees

B - The bottom-up, grassroots approach of the folksonomy (a user directed taxonomy via social bookmarks or content tags {e.g. Deli.co.us or YouTube tags)

There are of course pros and cons for both arguments. The major advantage to the corporate taxonomy is that it represents a single policy for all, presumably driven by experts that should know how to classify content. However, such an approach cannot take into account the full nomenclature and cultural nuances of an entire organization, and all of its teams, nationalities, and roles. However, user content tags (metadata) can be determined by anyone, but can be subjective, inconsistent, and often lack objectivity, or worse are flat-out wrong.

A user-generated "tag cloud"

Case in point: according to one study, 40% of Flickr tags and 28% of del.icio.us tags are flawed (Guy & Tonkin, 2006). Some of the more common tagging problems include:

• Misspellings (e.g. library vs. library)
• Subjective interpretation (e.g. Enterprise 2.0 vs. Web 2.0)
• Compound words (e.g. enterpriseintranet)
• Case & number (e.g. folksonomy versus Folksonomies)
• Personal tags (e.g. content tags at the pure discretion of the user, whether relevant or not)
• Inappropriate language (insert expletive or link to porn site)

Stephanie Lemieux of Earley & Associates summarizes the crux of the problem: “Any taxonomy can benefit from more direct user input – but a folksonomy is like a perpetual card sort!”

“User tagging can help refine the corporate taxonomy,” says Lemieux who suggests an approach using elements of both a corporate taxonomy and a user-directed folksonomy may help alleviate the challenges and problems of both.

“I think comparing taxonomies with folksonomies is a bit like comparing access to apples at grocery stores with access to apples at picnics,” says Jay Feinberg, an information architect and partner with JuxtaProse. “One can make apple to apple comparisons, but the contexts, in both cases, are very elaborate (both as infrastructures, and as processes). There are plenty of information system universes where both grocery stores and picnics can coexist.”

“Although ‘tagging‘ is often promoted as an alternative to organization by a hierarchy of categories, more and more online resources seem to use a hybrid system, where items are organized into broad categories, with finer classification distinctions being made by the use of tags,” according to the Wikipedia file on “Tag” (metadata).

According to Lemieux, the benefits of the hybrid, taxonomy driven folksonomy include:

• Enhances findability of content
• High-value”content is appropriately tagged
• Previous tags are harnessed for other related content
• Mistakes such as misspellings and plurals are avoided
• Inappropriate tags are weeded out

Based in Adelaide, Australia, Education.audevelops and manages Australian online services for education and training and is in the process of developing a user portal called myedna with a taxonomy directed folksonomy. “Users will be provided with a box in which to enter their own tags for resources,” say the project managers Sarah Hayman and Nick Lothian (Source: “Taxonomy Directed Folksonomies”, Hayman and Lothian, Dec. 2007). “As they type a tag, they will be prompted by a thesaurus, which will suggest terms that match the term they have entered.”

Driven by a corporate thesaurus (thesauri), portal users will be allowed to tag content with keywords, but the keywords are controlled and directed by drop-down menus that allow the user to choose the most appropriate keywords. Users therefore can tag content with the most appropriate labels, but are limited to a list of terms (all of which have been approved and all are spelled correctly).

“Tags will be collated over time and a tag cloud produced and displayed,” say Hayman and Lothian. “The tags in the clouds will come both from user tags and from tags selected from thesauri. This collection of tags will be a folksonomy that has been directed by a taxonomy.”

However, Lemieux cautions against the Education.au approach noting there are multiple approaches to using the hybrid model.

“The librarian in me likes it the most (the Education.au approach)– you’re sure to achieve more consistency,” adds Lemieux. “90% of the time they’ll choose what’s there – but its not true social tagging. The true Web 2.0 approach is using the taxonomy AND social tagging.”

Regardless of the approach, all organizations should have a corporate taxonomy, and should require all publishers to tag content, and encourage users to do the same. The more content you publish, the greater the need.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Don’t forget to add the Tax  

The Taxonomy Guide

Social bookmarking the intranet

The lost meaning of knowledge management

No Silver Bullet for Knowledge Management