Folksonomy - more collective classification

There is growing interest in social classification and its relation to ontology development.

New web genres for sharing bookmarks, digital pictures and personal contacts?, are driving reflection on the value, importance and role of collaborative taxonomy and classification, meta-data generation and its application in retrieval, feeds and notification services.

The emerging term is folksonomy - a relook at the advantages of 'flat' tags / keywords or categories to identify group objects (documents, posts, pictures, bookmarks or links) and the ways allow popular terms to bubble to the top.

So why is this important to KM?

* Classification is a core KM competency - think navigation, retrieval, search, language leverage and efficiencies - there is likely to be a repository somewhere in your work

* We work in a global environment, across cultural lines, with different disciplines - but we need a common understanding and shared context to collaborate, invent, inform and learn

* There is a growing convergence linking (personal) networks and subject domains - think communities of practice and interest - we are looking to hook to people and objects that have strong affinities and internal relationships

* Emerging tools are dependent on a common language and shared meaning, e.g. collaborative filters, recommender systems and visual navigation

* Knowledge work is all about sharing understanding, sense-making, increasing awareness and coming to know what we don't know - sharing tags, applying meaningful meta-data and finding related stuff, is core to making advances

So are you playing folksonomy games yet?