At the Blogher session on tagging and structured blogs, lots of questions about the practice of tagging, so here’s a relevant entry of Kellan’s on the subject from a couple of years ago.
People are still too stiff and rigid with their tagging technique. Loosen up. You don’t have to find the “right category” to put something into, that is part of the tyranny and inflexibility of a classification scheme that we’re trying to get away from. Don’t tell me what it is, the “truth” of it as it were. Tell my why it matters.
Someone in the audience, I think they are from the Poynter Institute, asked about studies of tagging. Clay Shirky’s talk, Ontology is Overrated, goes into some detailed studies of tagging patterns on del.icio.us.
