Here’s a simple way to watch some of the basic mechanisms at work. My original power outlet post has generated the following links in del.icio.us. It’s easy to see at once how the user driven rather than rule/process driven tagging generates unique result sets and yet can be effectively tied together and related. There are no tags, for example, in common to each and every posting, but wifi and flickr are each in four of seven links. Extrapolate that out over larger data sets, and it’s obvious that in many situations folksonomies will be very self-correcting.
As a bonus link, if you want to self-correct your own individual folksonomy, give this link a look. Plug in my tag, sogrady, and it’s clear I’ve got some tidying up to do.
