A million monkeys on an million keyboards
Last year’s hot new thing, tagging and folksonomy got a more nuanced look this year. On one hand there is growing belief in “the wisdom of crowds” or the ability of large groups of people to under the right conditions to demonstrate a collective intelligence that is much greater than any individual member.
On the other hand, many presenters raised practical issues with tagging and folksonomy. Tagging is currently being utilized by a very small proportion of internet users; it needs to be better integrated into existing tools to achieve wider acceptance. There are potential issues with tag spamming. Further the wisdom of crowds may not be the best filter for all sets of information, some may be better addressed by a smaller group of trusted experts.
One interesting note was the potentially democratizing effect of tagging. The use of bottom-up rather than top-down organization of information allows communities to exercise great influence over how information is organized.
Related Panels:
The Wisdom of Crowds program | notes | podcast