Folksonomies

Many-to-Many: folksonomies controlled vocabularies

Here is a snippet of an ongoing debate over the value of 'folksonomies', or user developed taxonomies. Usually I am happy to take sides in these kinds of debates but this one leaves me on the fence.

On one hand I am a firm believer in centrally organized standards. From nuts and bolts to metadata, standards make life a whole lot easier.

On the other hand, I am also a believer in the creative and innovative power of a community, especially a self selected online community.

I will be keeping an eye on this debate as it unfolds further.