Folksonomies VS Controlled Vocabularies

Although most of the articles this week mention top-down and bottom-up classification schemes, the only reading that explains the difference between the two is “Folksonomies: Power to the People.” I am not impressed that the other articles assume that their readers understand these terms and employ them without any sort of definition. Had I known this prior to beginning my readings, I would have read Quintarelli’s article before the others.

This week’s readings make it quite apparent that there is a real struggle between the folksonomists (bottom-up classification scheme) and those who favor controlled vocabularies (top-down classification scheme). While reading I realized that both folksonomies and controlled vocabularies have certain shortcomings. Controlled vocabularies are “rigid, conservative and centralized” (Quintarelli). This system places items in just one category, although items may actually fit in numerous groups. Folksonomies, on the other hand, are imprecise and unstructured and this may cause difficultly locating information.

Folksonomies allow people to examine how others tag resources and this often influences the folksonimist’s tagging choices. Kroski finds this trend interesting stating that “it gives us an opportunity to observe user behaviour and tagging patterns” (Kroski). Lawley; however, sees a problem with the trend to “maximize agreement rather than depth” (Lawley). Lawley seems bothered by the fact that “increasingly, people are changing the way they label their links or photos because of how they see other people labeling them” (Lawley). I don’t totally understand her point; however, because to me this does not seem much different than using controlled vocabularies. In fact, it could be a good thing as folksonomists are using similar tags and therefore providing consistency without being forced to do so.