Tagging Systems, Ontology
Can't sleep so started reading about tagging systems, folksomononies and such. Came across this essay called "Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags". Found it to be an interesting read. Has not helped me sleep though.Well-managed, well-groomed organizational schemes get worse with scale, both because the costs of supporting such schemes at large volumes are prohibitive, and, as I noted earlier, scaling over time is also a serious problem. Tagging, by contrast, gets better with scale. With a multiplicity of points of view the question isn't "Is everyone tagging any given link 'correctly'", but rather "Is anyone tagging it the way I do?" As long as at least one other person tags something they way you would, you'll find it -- using a thesaurus to force everyone's tags into tighter synchrony would actually worsen the noise you'll get with your signal. If there is no shelf, then even imagining that there is one right way to organize things is an error.
Meaning is agreement. Most people disagree with the crazy person.
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