Friday, April 15, 2005

Inconsistency of Tagging on del.icio.us

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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