What would you see observing a user working with folksonomy?

Probably the first study of this kind here from Ulises Ali Mejias at ideant. A good point on distributed social classification.

… this study attempts to identify some of the information management and meaning construction practices of an online distributed classification (a.k.a. free tagging or ethnoclassification) community. Specifically, this study seeks to investigate the social and communicative practices that emerge when users are encouraged to share web links with one another by using a metadata keyword, or tag, to demark a social group, apart from using other tags to classify links according to an emergent taxonomy.

These are the conclusions:

The transition from fixed to distributed classification can be confusing

it is hard for people to make the initial conceptual shift from traditional forms of classification (using fixed taxonomies) to distributed classification schemes (using flexible taxonomies). The freedom to define individual and social structures of classification emergently can be perceived as chaotic, lacking rigor and utility.

But after an initial phase users star to appreciate system features

However, the more comfortable users become with a system’s features, the more aware they become of the benefits of distributed classification, and the more aware they also become of working within its limitations.

Delicious seems to miss some basic community features useful for people

It can be argued that distributed classification systems such as del.icio.us do not exhibit some of the features commonly thought of as necessary to support online communities (features such as the ability to access ‘profile’ knowledge about individual users, the ability to communicate directly with other users, and the ability to rate the quality of submissions).

Finally Some valuable references:

References
Biddulph, M. (2004, November 10). Introducing del.icio.us. Retrieved on December 15, 2004 from http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2004/11/10/delicious.html

Merholz, P. (2004, October 19). Metadata for the masses. Retrieved on December 15, 2004 from http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000361.php

Shirky, C. (2004, August 25). Folksonomy. Retrieved on December 15, 2004 from http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/08/25/folksonomy.php

Udell, J. (2004, August 20). Collaborative knowledge gardening. Retrieved on December 15, 2004 from http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/08/20/34OPstrategic_1.html

Williams, A. (2004, November 19). Terms of the night: Folksonomy and ethnoclassification. Retrieved on December 15, 2004 from http://www.livejournal.com/users/zamiel/831808.html

In the same category:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 1st, 2005 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Information Architecture, Online Resources, External Articles, Studies and Researches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.