> User-tagging, social-bookmarking, that kind of stuff, may generate
> interesting matrices of information, but does it really lend itself to
> developing complex taxonomies?
I think the technology is too new for any kind of answer to that excellent question.
Another question could be: Does this technology work for people who use it? People do have different ways of looking for information. Libraries and information have been controlled for years through fairly standard classification and ordering schemes. The LC classification system has lots of problems. It works but it has terrible biases and is resistant to democratic input. The LC system is to user-tagging as the Encyclopedia Britannica is to Wikipedia.
Each system has its strengths and weaknesses.
> The wiki approach to just about everything is bottom-up, and that
> egalitarian spirit has its charms. But, paradoxically enough, it
> doesn't seem work very well for devising complex classification
> schemes. I mean: would it be the best interest of everyone to have
> non-librarians organizing the books of the Library of Congress? Or
> does Google make the whole idea of fixed classifications redundant?
Wikipedia is really not as egalitarian as it appears, as people who read my blog would have heard.
Google and Wikipedia do make fixed classification schemes irrelevant. Most people access Wikipedia articles via the search engine and then via links. Wikipedia has implemented a category system which mostly works. But Internet users these days access information and pages via search engines. People do not use directories or organized classification systems as much as ten years ago. Yahoo has actually de-emphasized their directory.
I've been copying lots of data from Wikipedia lately for several of my projects, so I've gotten a good look under the hood from browsing and reading hundreds of pages. Wikipedia has a strong bias towards pop culture and contemporary subjects. The older a subject is, the less information there typically is in an entry. There are surprising exception, when you find a page written by a person or person who really know lots about a subject.
The other day I discovered an annoying grammatical problem on Wikipedia.
There are many movie entries where films is talked about in the past tense. These entries start with the incorrect "Blade Runner was a movie..." instead of the correct "Blade Runner is a movie..."
Chuck0