Gavin’s Digital Diner

I’m reminded of the Dormouse’s advice to Alice when I start to talk about philosophy.

… "you know you say things are much of a muchness," said the Dormouse, — "did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?" "Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused, "I don’t think—" "Then you shouldn’t talk," said the Hatter…

In his blog, EEK Speaks, EEK took me to task for being a wee bit too black and white in my views about taxonomies and folksonomies. He’s right. That’s the trouble with waxing philosophical, it tends towards the polemic. In truth, the world is much more gray.[In Michigan, in January, this is especially true.]

Casting taxonomies and folksonomies as mutually exclusive was not my intention. I think my intention was to differentiate [not bloviate] — truthfully both have their strengths .

EEK sums it up pretty nicely when he says that comparing the two is asking the wrong question. In his words:

"Folksonomies and taxonomies are not quite apples and oranges, but they’re not apples and apples either. Debating the two is intellectually interesting, but it obscures the real opportunity, which is understanding how the two could potentially augment each other. Here I think there is a real possibility for some sort of synergy. "

That synergy is important, as it seems to me that that synergy would address the weaknesses of both approaches. I’d still argue that the folksonomic approach misses on accuracy [or inclusiveness]. As well, for the most part, folksonomies seem to be unbearably and essentially "flat," while taxonomies are almost by definition hierarchically structured. That "flatness" adds to the approachability of a folksonomy. [But, I think it also adds to my discomfort with folksonomies.]

Nevertheless, reading between the lines of a number of comments, posts and the like, it’s clear to me that the folksonomic approach has some real plusses:

• Folksonomies are very approachable. By this I mean that people seem to take to the concept quickly and naturally, there is no required decoder ring, no secret handshake. This is an important plus, by the way. The problem with taxonomies is that no one uses them or understands them.
• Folksonomies are extremely scalable. This assumes, of course, that you have a sufficient critical mass of folks doing usable tagging, what Kevin over at High Touch referred to as "peer generated." [The name "High Touch" made me smile, btw. The past has a way of wrapping around to greet you again.]
• Folksonomies tend to be self-updating/self-generating. As the world changes, they can rapidly change and morph. This, by the way, I think is one of their real strengths, and, conversely, is one of the real weaknesses of a traditional taxonomic approach to classification.

For an excellent summary and expansion of the discussion, please see Beth’s post NPTech discussion.

Slightly off the subject: This reminds me of something I sorely miss. It was a newsletter, now defunct, that told me more about the world than anything I have ever seen since. Back in the days of Disco, Leisure Suits, and Donna Summers, I was busy trying to develop software that would do ontological contextual analysis of online bibliographic databases. [As you can tell, in those days my answer to the perennial D.C. question of "what do you do" could (and did) glaze eyes at ten paces.]

One of the database venders I worked with then, produced an online equivalent to the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. It was called the Magazine Index. They also did the National Newspaper Index, and a host of trade indexes. It was amazing stuff for the time — some citations were even (said with hushed reverence) full text!

Monthly, they also produced a newsletter that contained nothing but a list of all the new terms added to their taxonomy. It was an amazing snapshot of social change; a list of all the new terms — a reflection of all the social issues — that were being added to the national lexicon. Just between you and me, I always wondered what the trigger was; what critical mass had to be met before a term was "made."

Reminiscences aside, the problems I see with taxonomies are twofold:

First —there is a perverse tendency to overdo it, especially in the nonprofit world.

Having spent time both developing what I hoped where workable taxonomies and trying to implement such taxonomies, people have the damnest tendency to try to develop categorization schemes that include the kitchen sink, all the plumbing, and the plumber’s family, neighbors, and their pets.

This is a real problem. And, I believe, one of the reasons that taxonomies are so chumpy. Given a chance, a committee will create a taxonomy that effectively catalogs things so granularly that you end up with one item per category.

Instead of something like:

    Shoes/Mens/Black/Dress

You get:

    Shoes/Mens/Black/Dress/need shining/on my feet right now (left)[untied]

The irony is, of course, that the committee that developed the taxonomy will very likely be composed of the same people that find the taxonomy unusable.

My advice:

I’ve always felt that there is a sweet spot in the development of any taxonomy, something I call "the rule of four and one" (or four fingers and a thumb – when explained, I usually find myself wiggling my four fingers and wagging my thumb around to make the point.) A taxonomy, at its most granular level, should identify no less than 1-percent of the items being catalogued, and no more than 4 percent. If any one term identifies less than 1 percent of the collection (or god-forbid, one "thing") then you’ve gone too far into the heart of darkness, and if it identifies more than 4 percent.., well, you’re not far enough down the river quite yet.

Second — there is a tendency to forget the goal.

There is a tendency of those that develop and maintain a taxonomy to forget its purpose. The purpose is to make things easy to find, to add organization, to add "intelligence" to otherwise disorganized data. Its purpose is not to empower one group over another with secret knowledge, and thereby ensure continued employment.

[The true goal of the radical librarian is to empower people with the ability to find stuff they want. It's not to keep the books lined up neatly on the shelves.]

I’ve always figured that there are three elements to effective knowledge management, namely:

1. Know garbage when you see it or, conversely, know what to keep and why, and trash the rest. (From this, springs my core axiom that 80% of everything is garbage.)
2. Know where to keep it, and have a simple method to organize it; keep it neat, clean, and well weeded. "Weeding" is a key concept, by the way.
3. Know how to find it again, and that means an easy (read accessible) categorization scheme.

Most taxonomies are overly cumbersome, slow to change, and tend to be obscure to the very people that want to use them. And, in hindsight, this violates both my second and third elements. Violating those axioms means that, in the end, you’ll only have a beast that must be fed and fed, but that never delivers back much of any value. Coupling a folksonomy together with a taxonomy, and using the folksonomic approach to keep the taxonomy current, seems a perfect match.

Finally — re-reading all the comments to my original post — it struck me that taxonomic tools tend to be terrible; especially when compared to the tools associated with the folksonomic systems currently in the wild. Tagging on Delicious is a breeze. I see my tags, I see other peoples’ tags, I even get suggestions based on how others have tagged things. It’s quick and easy, and visible.

Compare and contrast that to the abysmal interface (and the abysmal taxonomy for that matter) provided by TechFinder. [I get to pick on Techfinder because much of what it is, and much of what it isn't, is my fault.]

Techfinder looks to me like a perfect example of where a folksonomic/taxonomic synergy would be eminently more usable. With TechFinder, it’s clear that spirit of Dr. Frankenstein was hovering close by during the development of the taxonomy (it’s missing a hierarchy, but it’s definitely Abby Normal’s brain). It’s also clearly in need of some web-two-dot-oh tools to improve its unbearable chumpness of being.

With the NPTech tag, I think it just needs to be slightly less "flat." As it stands now, it’s a good catch-all, but it fails the "four and one" rule. I’d like to see it deepened somehow.

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