Commas, spaces and long lists - tagging comes of age

Once we whispered in corners about the 'Semantic web'.

Next we built taxonomies and tried to package up the world into suitable drawers and boxes.

Then, as with all things, the users got tired of waiting and starting writing their own labels and tagging was born.

You know what, you can tell when a technology has really come of age because people start getting really picky about the details. Think fires and ovens. Motor carriages and cars. Spectrums and iPhones.

OK, I'm stretching it. But nonetheless, a recent thread on the Sigia-L mailing list gave me cause to cheer. Jared Spool, Scott Nelson, Ziya et al. are all busily bickering in the best way about how to delimit tags. Hurray!

Now I have my own views, and I suspect Jared hit it on the head when he said:

"The real question is "Should each form on the web be design to best
support the user's experience?" The answer would, of course, be Yes."

... but its a sign that the age of the true semantic web is coming close. If tagging is so pervasive now that we are ready to refine the details, then we can hope that soon tagging content will be ubiquitous enough to ensure frameworks can evolve to effectively share and interweave computer-generated content.

Read the list at http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/