Folksonomy vs. Taxonomy – How well do classifications capture /describe

our “reality” / meanings?Or

A rose is a rose by any other name – or is it?

Friday Forum Presentation 23rd September 2011

Alister Clark

The Australian Oxford Paperback Dictionary (1990): n. The scientific practice of classifying living things.

Online dictionary:1. the science or technique of classification. 2. a classification into ordered categories: a proposed taxonomy of educational objectives. 3. Biology . the science dealing with the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms. Origin: 1805–15; French taxonomie.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/taxonomy

Tax·on·o·my 

Online Encyclopaedia: WikipediaTaxonomy …is the practice and science of classification. Taxonomy uses taxonomic units, known as taxa ... In addition… a taxonomy, or taxonomic scheme, is a particular classification ("the taxonomy of ..."), arranged in a hierarchical structure.

Typically this is organized by supertype-subtype relationships…or less formally, parent-child relationships. In such an inheritance relationship, the subtype by definition has the same properties, behaviors, and constraints as the supertype plus one or more additional properties, behaviors, or constraints.

For example: car is a subtype of vehicle, so any car is also a vehicle, but not every vehicle is a car.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy

Carl von Linne AKA Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)

Lopped the unruly ground cherry:Physalis amno ramosissime ramis angulosis glabrus foliis dentoserratis

into the manageable:

Physalis angulatus

…and endowed them with an arresting anthropomorphic

amorousness. …

Taxonomic influences

Sailing ships and horses…

Hand writing letters with quill and ink…

by candle and lamp light.

My experience with plant taxonomy

• The advantages of plant taxonomy club membership

• Understanding natural variation and accepting prototypes

• Coping with the frustration of taxonomic

revisions

• Metaphysical questions – when the world is finally fully categorised, what then?

Categories in geography & GIS

Problems with categories 2

• Which category and where are the boundaries - fixture or floor?

• Separating things is good, but costly, so is duplication.

• What is your purpose and your resources?

Problems with taxonomy, classification, categorisation

• You have to know the taxonomy, they are not always easily accessible, which limits usage to the “educated”.

• If the taxonomy is hierarchical you need to know the pathway through the taxonomy.

• They are not always stable, often being revised.• A taxonomy may not reflect how other people

classify and conceptualise things.

Taxonomic achievements

• Taxonomy has classified many things, allowing us to communicate, some parts very stable.

• Other parts not really stable so are taxonomies ever consistent?

• Simple? – matter of perspective• Complete - how many species are

undescribed?

Taxonomy’s Holy Grail

The Independent, March 2011, quoting research being reported in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution:• “1,424,153 species have so far been catalogued

worldwide, including 61,995 vertebrates and more than one million insects… estimate that that there are 5,426,075 unknown species… estimate the total cost of finishing the job at $263bn”

New Scientist, 3rd September, 2005 quoting research in Science, vol 309, p1387:• “…their estimate of bacterial biodiversity hit 1 million

species per gram of soil”

Folksonomy

Nothing in the Australian Oxford Dictionary (1990)

Online dictionary:noun Computers . a classification system derived from user-generated electronic tags or keywords that annotate and describe online content: Imprecise folksonomies can hinder information retrieval. Origin: 2000–05; blend of folks and taxonomy

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/folksonomy, 7/9/2011

Online Encyclopaedia: WikipediaA folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content…

Folksonomy, a term coined by Thomas Vander Wal, is a portmanteau of folks and taxonomy.

Folksonomies became popular on the Web around 2004 as part of social software applications such as social bookmarking and photograph annotation.

Tagging, which is one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 services, allows users to collectively classify and find information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy

A Folksonomic GIS

Delicious tags for Bing Maps

23/5/2011 10/9/2011

Social capital: Bonding and Bridging - can Folksonomies help create bridging social capital?

Bing Maps

Online

Travel

Maps

Problems with Folk

• Lack of control and stability?

• Less explanatory power, (but for what purpose?)E.g. Bing Maps as “maps”

• Not authoritative or scientific

• Whimsical, imprecise or just wrong (daily, info?)

Taxonomy and folksonomy are ways of classifying the world. Why?

• To organise, a way of “filing” the world• Help make sense of the world – identify

relationships and differences between things.• Allows communication, reduces uncertainty?.• An attempt to objectively describe the real

world.

Taxonomy Folksonomy

Scientific, objective, authoritative

Contextual, relative, popular

Created from top down and controlled

Evolves from the bottom up, open

Hierarchical, nested Flat, networked

Technical language Intuitive, natural language

Taxonomy or Folksonomy

• Does it have to be one or the other?

• Will / can the ‘onomy family hybridise – Tolkonomy, Faxsonomy, Taxolkonomy…

• Can you and do you want to see the wood, the trees or the forest?