Somehow, a blogger decided to complain about the lack of Tagging Standards and made it on Slashdot.
The funny part is, I can sum up his entire article in one sentence: People are not typing the tags the same way, and maybe, it’s the ability to add a space in the tag that’s causing the problem.
I dunno, maybe I’m a little weird for thinking that there really isn’t a need for standards. Why should we change what people type? If there is a real need for tagging standards, why are tags working so well? Look at Technorati and look how many people use the same tags. Sure, there are times when the top 5 tags are the same related subject, but when I saw that, that was a big deal (Saddam’s Hanging) and there where multiple aspects surrounding the blog posts.
I don’t think there needs to be a tagging standard – I really don’t. What I do think should happen is that we, as a community, should get together to design a system, or Artificial Intelligence, that links like tags into groups. If you really want to make something better, I think thats the way to go. Use AI to link everyone talking about Britney (britaney, britteny, britney) Spears together (Gee, thats easy: Starts with a B, has a T, ends in a Y and has Spears tacked onto it…they must be writing about the same thing. Its all about patterns). It won’t matter how they spell it, they’re all talking about the same thing. Grouping and giving the ability to drill down on a specific tag or sub-subject/tag would be much better than forcing conformance to something that is already open and accepted in the community as such.
