What is a Folksonomy

Overview

A folksonomy is a user-generated taxonomy used to categorize and retrieve web content such as Web pages, photographs and Web links, using open-ended labels called tags. Typically, folksonomies are Internet-based, but their use may occur in other contexts. The folksonomic tagging is intended to make a body of information increasingly easy to search, discover, and navigate over time. A well-developed folksonomy is ideally accessible as a shared vocabulary that is both originated by, and familiar to, its primary users. Two widely cited examples of websites using folksonomic tagging are Flickr and del.icio.us, although it has been suggested that Flickr is not a good example of folksonomy.

Folksonomy on WikiPedia

Folksonomy Service configuration

How is it working

The tags are stored in the JCR at the path /jcr:system/exo:ecm/exo:folksomomies/exo:tags. All the nodes of the taxonomy are of type exo:tag. The name of the tag is the name of the node.

A tagged document has the mixin exo:folksonomized and in the property exo:folksonomy contains the list of reference to tags.