Folksonomy vs. Taxonomy

A folksonomy is a way for a group of people to collaboratively label and organize a collection of information that gives no one user more control than another.A taxonomy is a system of classification of information or objects that is controlled by a governing agency or group thus giving more control to a select group of people.

One of the many benefits of a folksonomy is the ability of any user to contribute to a collection of knowledge. Regardless of class or authority anyone can contribute ideas and information freely thus bringing a democratization to the web. People everyday upload photos to the web. It is up to them to name and label these photos correctly if they want other users on the web to be able to find them quickly and easily. The owner of the photo then adds a tag to the photo and uploads it. We can all now search for that photo and reference it. In the event that the owner wants to add more tags or edit existing tags this can be done easily as the owner's will.

If this process were governed by a taxonomy then the photo would first have to be submitted to the proper authority/governing entity of photos then after review the photo would be assigned a tag and posted on the web. If the tags had to be changed or removed then the process would have to repeat through the governing party and would take considerably more time than if the owner could just change the tags.

The downside to a folksonomy setup is that it lacks a form of information verification. Anyone has the power to contribute whatever they want regardless of its credibility. In certain circumstances this can be problematic, such as in trying to create an online encyclopedia. But for say...blogging...I now have the freedom to say whatever I want with as little credibility as I want. :-)