John Dvorak has a go at tagging: To Tag or Not to Tag, That Is the Question
Enter yet another more baffling attempt at tagging. This one is fascinating since it’s been gussied up with a new name, and for some unknown reason been given the blessing of a bunch of brain-dead bloggers. This is because a few of the favorite sites that the bloggers love have tacitly approved of the so-called—get this—”folksonomy tags.” Oh, a new term! This one is a laugh riot, since there is nothing new here except the new name: Folksonomy. I mean even in HTML there was the “metatag.”
No, no. This is different because, uh well, uh, lemme think. It just is!
I love his writing, and I admire his feist, if that’s a word (feistiness doesn’t seem to do justice to him, but feist seems to refer to ‘a nervous belligerent little mongrel dog’ so I better return to feistiness). I disagree with him on tags (I would, I’m a brain-dead blogger) but he makes a good point or two. I’ll leave it to others to pick up the argument, who will do a better job than I, but I was interested in the nearly all positive comments his column received online. Clearly the technorati aren’t popular in all sectors of the city. Is all this blogiverse thing turning into the same elitist, self-referential, self-reverential bunch of blowhards as the folks they’re trying to dislodge? Or as Dvorak puts it:
The influential bloggers should be defined here. These are people whom you’ve never heard of, but whom other influential A-list utopianist bloggers all know. I reckon there are about 500 of them. He (or she) influences other like-minded bloggers, creating a groupthink form of critical mass, just like atomic fission, as they bounce off each other with repetitive cross-links: trackback links, self-congratulatory links, confirmations, and praise-for-their-genius links. BOOM! You get a formidable explosion—an A-bomb of groupthink. You could get radiation sickness if you happen to be in the area. Except for Wired online and a few media bloggers, nobody is in the area, so nobody outside the groupthink community really cares about any of this. These explosions are generally self-contained and harmless to the environment.
Is this the first salvo in a backlash, or did I miss an earlier fusillade?
The first backlash against tagging? No, a few people have chimed in recently there, including Tim Bray, Danny Sullivan, and Gary Price. Links to their posts at:
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2005/04/questioning-tags.html
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Thanks, Greg. I should have made clear I meant backlash against the A list.
Do you think John likes anything that has come about since Windows 3.1?
He does not seem to grasp much of anything any more other than he love to hate things, then prove he really has no understanding of what he hates. Gotta love him.
Dvorak missed on this. Folksonomy has been used in Information Architecture for quite a while. I’ve seen it around for at least 2 years, if not longer (I think).
Folksonomies are different than metatags; metatags are whatever the page author wants them to be. Folksonomies, if they are done properly, are terms that are used by the group you are communicating with; they are generally the result of surveys or other studies.
Dvorak says (amongst other things) “The semantic Web is a dead duck” – really John? The Semantic Web is dead? Dear oh dear, I wonder has John been good enough to tell Tim Berners-Lee – after all this is Tim’s current project. I’d hate to see him wasting his time!
Co-incidentally I wrote a post yeaterday on the importance of tagging and how Technorati Tags can increase Search Engine optimisation for a site if chosen carefully – see http://www.tomrafteryit.net/wordpress-categories-technorati-tags-and-search-engine-optimisation/
Dvorak says (amongst other things) “The semantic Web is a dead duck” – really John? The Semantic Web is dead? Dear oh dear, I wonder has John been good enough to tell Tim Berners-Lee – after all this is Tim’s current project. I’d hate to see him wasting his time!
Co-incidentally I wrote a post yeaterday on the importance of tagging and how Technorati Tags can increase Search Engine optimisation for a site if chosen carefully – see http://www.tomrafteryit.net/wordpress-categories-technorati-tags-and-search-engine-optimisation/
I’d say ‘nervous belligerent little mongrel dog’ is accurate.