I agree that we shouldn’t be the ones who decide what is at stake. We wouldn’t agree, and even then our opinions don’t matter. Well put.

I’m interested in how folksonomies translate into other contexts, too. Right now, I see them as a great way to express ideas in a relatively new domain, and I’m wondering if there is a point at which we would move to a more structured way of doing things, like automation. It would seem in those domains that you mentioned (legal,financial,political) that we need structure, but as I mentioned that might only be necessary for “transactions”, in which we allow little interpretation as possible.

I’m still convinced, however, that in most communication systems we need a high level of interpretation, because we really don’t understand things in the same way.

For the record, i’m not sceptical of the power of folksonomies at all, but want to understand how they will translate into other contexts, particularly ones where they will interact with ‘hard’ taxonomies. An ongoing exchange with Clay on our blogs has usefully prompted me to try and explain this a bit more.

One thing – I would disagree with your interpretation of my use of the phrase ‘nothing is at stake’. For the nursing community, it was precisely their place within the bureaucracy of the healthcare industry that was at stake – that was what they were trying to solve with the creation of the NIC. I did not suggest that this was their aim – I was reporting from the analysis provided from the community themselves in ‘Sorting Things Out’.

I would suggest that its not up to me or you to decide. For all taxonomies – folk or otherwise – only the community engaged in the process can define what is at stake. This is what the commons-based folksonomies add that is so radical – they make it easy for people to participate and articulate their needs. My comments were aimed at asking whether these models would be productive outside of the relatively benign contexts that we have seen so far.

Vernaculonomy is cumbersome though.

So is Vernacularchy. So I guess we stay with folksonomy for the time being.

When we are embarking on new concepts or going between cultural subgroups, there’s likely to be disagreement. There are all sorts of ways to handle that.

I’m not sure it is so worth to debate the merits of going forward. Folksonomy folks should just go forward and try to work out the problems that will inevitably arise. Then, we’ll see what we get of value.

Personally, I am watching with interest what Ben Hammersley is doing at The Observer Blog.

The portion about the nurses, I would even say supports the idea that it ceased to be a “folksonomy” as soon as it was adopted by more than one person. It then became a taxonomy by committee. Everyone agreed (controlled) the language after that point. The only difference being the terms used were possibly less scientific or exact than a formal taxonomy.