● Folksonomy

257 2026-07-28 note ♋ ♈

Thomas Vander Wal coined the term "folksonomy" in 2004, a portmanteau of "folk" and "taxonomy", to describe the bottom-up tagging happening on Flickr and del.icio.us. No fixed hierarchy, just users applying whatever labels made sense to them, with structure emerging afterward from the aggregate.

He later split it into broad folksonomies, where many people can apply the same tag and popularity becomes visible, and narrow ones, where each tag is applied once, usually by the item's own creator.

Both Symbol TaxonomyI'm using single-character symbols, one per type as a quick visual cue: | type | symbol | example | | -------- | ------ | ------------------------ | | quote | > | on-writing-daily | | bookmark | ⚹ | eleventy-interlinker |… and Theme SymbolsA second, orthogonal taxonomy sits alongside the type symbols: themes, what a note is about rather than what it is. Optional per entry, defined in src/data/categories.js, and rendered as a small clickable glyph next to a note's metadata line linking… are designed taxonomies rather than emergent ones, drawing from a closed list in src/_data/categories.js instead of coining a new tag per note.

But MOCsA map of content is a note that's mostly links, a curated index into a cluster of atomic notes on one topic, sitting alongside folders and tags rather than replacing them. Automatic groupings can't make judgment calls the way a… and category pages both assume some structure will let a reader browse rather than only search, whereas pure folksonomy resists any structure not built by the reader themselves.