Social Tagging and Folksonomies

Some Definitions

This website is an attempt to consistently define key terms related to tagging and folksonomies. These definitions form the basis of the Modular Unified Tagging Ontology (MUTO) that is specified at: http://purl.org/muto

Resource
A resource is anything that is uniquely addressable within a software application or computer network. In Web contexts, the term resource is broadly defined as "whatever might be identified by a URI" [RFC 3986, p. 5].
Tag
A tag is an arbitrary text label associated with a resource.
Automatic Tag
An automatic tag is a tag that is automatically associated with a resource (e.g. by a tagging system), i.e. it is not entered by a human being.
Semantic Tag
A semantic tag is a tag with an explicitly defined meaning (e.g. expressed by a link to a well-defined resource).
Tagging (Def I)
Tagging is the indexing method of associating tags with resources, usually for personal information management and later retrieval.
Social Tagging
Social tagging is tagging in an open online environment where the tags of one user are available to others.
Group Tagging
Group tagging is tagging performed by a group of users.
Automatic Tagging
Automatic tagging is tagging with automatic tags.
Semantic Tagging
Semantic tagging is tagging with semantic tags.
Tagging (Def II)
A single annotation resulting from the indexing method of tagging is also called tagging. The sum of these annotations is the folksonomy.
Private Tagging
A private tagging is a tagging that is only visible to its creator.
Folksonomy
A folksonomy is "the result of personal free tagging [...] for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (shared and open to others) [...] by the person consuming the information." [Van 2007]
Personomy
A personomy (or personal folksonomy) is the folksonomy that results from the tagging of a single user.
Tagging System
A tagging system is a software system that uses tagging for indexing.
Tag Cloud
A tag cloud displays "a certain number of most often used tags [...]. A tag's popularity is expressed by its font size (relative to the other tags) [...]. Sometimes, further visual properties, such as the font color, intensity, or weight, are manipulated [...]. Next to their visualization function, tag clouds are also navigation interfaces, as the tags are usually hyperlinks leading to a collection of items they are associated with." [LZT 2009]

Tagging Ontology

A formal way to describe the key concepts of tagging is an ontology, i.e. "an explicit specification of a conceptualization" [Gru 1993]. One such ontology is the Modular Unified Tagging Ontology (MUTO). It unifies core concepts from a number of tagging ontologies in one consistent schema. It supports different forms of tagging, such common, semantic, group, private, and automatic tagging, and is easily extensible. The MUTO specification is available at http://purl.org/muto.

References

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