Social Tagging

Upon reading Social Tagging as a Knowledge Organization and Resource Discovery Tool by Hesham Allam I thought why didn't I read this article first.  It made so much more sense than Wichowski's Folksonomies article and now in retrospect has helped me to understand that Wichowski's article a little bit better although still not completely.  I like how Hesham Allam broke down the different aspects of social tagging.  I understood the concept of Tag Clouds but TagMaps was new to me and without looking a the picture, which for visual learners is important, I understood what it was and how it worked.  In the article he talks about how people tag for two reasons either for themselves or for others.  When you tag for yourself its so that you can find what you want easier or for others so that other peoples information will be easier for everyone to find.  The motivations behind tagging are that the tags are better and more consistent when the tagger thinks that other people are viewing them than when they do them for themselves.  But once again like the other articles said there are pros and cons to social tagging.  Tagging applications may broaden horizons but then the uncontrolled use of tag vocabulary can also make some information more difficult to find.  Social Tagging gives its users the ability to control their world and offers the user organizational freedoms that traditional tools have not done previously.  Personally, I like social tagging because it gives me the opportunity to place things within categories that make sense to me.  My mind connects colors to topics as well as words but I try to avoid color coding when tagging because then I wouldn't be tagging for others.