Tagging, folksonomy, distributed classification, ethnoclassification—however it is labelled, the concept of users creating and aggregating their own metadata is gaining ground on the internet. This literature review briefly defines the topic at hand, looking at current implementations and summarizing key advantages and disadvantages of distributed classification systems with reference to prominent folksonomy commentators. After considering whether distributed classification can replace expert catalogers entirely, it concludes that distributed classification can make an important contribution to digital information organisation, but that it may need to be integrated with more traditional organisation tools to overcome its current weaknesses.
While professionally created metadata are often considered of high quality, it is costly in terms of time and effort to produce. User created metadata is a third approach, and this paper focuses on grassroots community classification of digital assets.
B. Krause, C. Schmitz, A. Hotho, and G. Stumme. AIRWeb '08: Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Adversarial information retrieval on the web, page 61--68. New York, NY, USA, ACM, (2008)
B. Krause, C. Schmitz, A. Hotho, and G. Stumme. AIRWeb '08: Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Adversarial information retrieval on the web, page 61--68. New York, NY, USA, ACM, (2008)
C. Marlow, M. Naaman, D. Boyd, and M. Davis. HYPERTEXT '06: Proceedings of the seventeenth conference on Hypertext and hypermedia, page 31--40. New York, NY, USA, ACM, (2006)
C. Marlow, M. Naaman, D. Boyd, and M. Davis. HYPERTEXT '06: Proceedings of the seventeenth conference on Hypertext and hypermedia, page 31--40. New York, NY, USA, ACM, (2006)
B. Krause, C. Schmitz, A. Hotho, and G. Stumme. AIRWeb '08: Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, page 61--68. New York, NY, USA, ACM, (April 2008)