The taggers at del.icio.us don't seem to be very consistent in whether they favor singular or plural nouns, or abbreviations or full words. Of the common similar tags used, I gathered this data:
- Singular
- article, blog, computer, download, forum, photo, tutorial
- Plural
- books, extensions, games, hacks, maps, resources, tags, tools
- Abbreviated
- tech
- Full
- development, information
Now, it makes sense that article, blog, forum, and tutorial should be singular — you more often see pages that are a single instance, rather than a collection, of these things, although article and tutorial could be argued. On the other hand, you don't usually see pages that are about just one computer — you find things about a whole line of computers, or using computers in general. And why does tech get to be abbreviated, but the other terms don't? I would expect info to be more likely abbreviated, but I would be wrong.
What del.icio.us needs is to provide a better way of seeing what other people have used as tags, or to come up with an official policy (the way Wikipedia prefers singulars to plurals), or to implemente a way of linking essentially identical tags together. Until then, the tag-synonomy will continue. :(
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