Acidus wrote:

Obviously the need for spaces in tags is an important one. Whether it’s “Semantic Web” or “Ford Interceptor” that you need to tag, it’s rather different from “Windows AND Vista” and “Ford AND Interceptor” - and it gets worse if you have a search engine that places OR in there instead of AND. Much worse. The big question is, why doesn’t such a standard already exist? It’s obvious that Web 2.0 is all about connecting ideas and bringing articles, content, and readers together. But anyone looking at the tagging process would immediately assume it’s about the exact opposite: splitting up content, making things difficult to find, and purposely making bloggers’ lives miserable.

Tagging by its very nature is more chaotic than a hierarchical topic system. Having a a good implementation is only half the battle: people must tag items well. A item that contains odd or tags that don't best describe the article is in danger of fading away. No one knows exactly what terms it could be filed under. This is where topics do very well. By imposing a controlled vocabulary, a searcher can presumably read the entire vocabulary to see all possible topic words they might be interested in.

I think a number of these problems are caused by an unclear goal for the tagging system. They are more chaotic, but I think their implementation lends itself to the site's objectives.

If the goal of tagging is to facilitate the cataloging and searching of the whole site's content, you must impose structure on the tagging input -- emphasize the user's use of the sitewide vocabulary, with input type specific guidelines or inputs (if picking dates, you click the calendar). Consider Amazon's tagging system.

If the goal of tagging is to enable the user to personalize and catalog their own information stream, then being more openended is appropriate. Consider flickr's tagging system, which is completely freeform. Or, livejournal's system, where it is a user defined vocabulary but with vocab tools to help a user stay internally consistent.

I prefer the latter, with tagging clouds. But I'm not implementing it. :)

RE: The Need for Creating Tag Standards