new word alert

Folksonomy

This is a great new word, obviously related to the word taxonomy. It is a way to describe the natural way people classify things when given the opportunity to assign keywords and very little feedback. This blog for instance uses categories for posting. Those categories exist in a flat namespace without hierarchy. Some of the categories are very descriptive, like "Movies to see" while others are hodge-podge like "Current Events" which is meaningless a few days after it is written. Yet, mostly it works, for fun examples see web services like flickr and del.icio.us the current darlings of the blogging set.