Image: Wikimedia Commons

folksonomy

Classification based on users' tags

EntityQ494291

Also known as collaborative tagging · social classification · social indexing · social tagging

Subclass of: document indexing

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Folksonomy is a classification system in which end users apply public tags to online items, typically to make those items easier for themselves or others to find later. Over time, this can give rise to a classification system based on those tags and how often they are applied or searched for, in contrast to a taxonomic classification designed by the owners of the content and specified when it is published. Folksonomy was originally "the result of personal free tagging of information [...] for one's own retrieval", but online sharing and interaction expanded it into more collaborative forms. Social tagging is the application of tags in an open online environment where the tags of other users are available to others. Collaborative tagging, also known as group tagging, is a form of tagging that is performed by a group of users. This type of folksonomy is commonly used in cooperative and collaborative projects, including research, content repositories, and social bookmarking.

Overview

All data

26 statements · 23% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Discovered by: Thomas Vander Wal
Named after: Volk subject named as: folk
taxonomy applies to name of subject: sonomy
Facet of: classification
Different from: folk taxonomy
ACM Classification Code (2012): 10003376

On other databases

19 identifiers linking folksonomy across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

23%

externally sourced

Source last edited July 10, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). folksonomy (Q494291). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/folksonomy-Q494291