[drupal-devel] what do you call a rose?

[Bèr Kessels]

Really. I can't be ###ed about those people that do not look any further then 
their noses length. 
If a user thinks drupal is not right for her/him because it has no folksonomy 
support, I, personally am very happy to say 'goodbye, and have a nice life'. 

If people are confused by names, and only by names, we are doing something 
very wrong. 
You do not recognise a rose by its name alone. Even if I call my cd-player a 
rose, it will never be one. Why? its because I have learned to recognise a 
CDplayer. Even if it is a B&O cd player (they dont look like cdplayers at 
all). So, how do I then know a B&O cdplayer is one, and not some oddly shaped 
bookshelf? ITs because of the links I make, the surrounding parameters i can 
link to it: it stands in the window of a cd-player-selling-shop, for example. 
Or the fact it carries a play button.

So, to get back to this ever continuing lets call it this and that and we 
solve a lot of trouble discussion: 
If the only thing one can recognise folksonomy by, is its name, we not only 
demand a lot from users who have no clue at all yet (there are a lot who have 
never heard folksonomy). But we also assume that the only thing we can make 
folksonomy, folksonomy is its name. And that is not the case. If it is, we 
have a usability problem, but in this case it is not. 
Free tagging, with help, examples, a different UI, etc is really enough for 
people to know what its about.

And last, but certainly not least: folksonomy is about community tagging. Free 
tagging is not. And we do not (yet) offer community tagging, in the pure 
sense of folksonomy.

Ber


On Thursday 29 September 2005 09:21, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Despite what Shakespeare says about the name of the rose (What’s in a
> name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet),
> it's still more convinient to call it a rose, simply because (lot) more
> people would know what are you talking of.
>
> "free tagging" has 13,300 results while folksonomy has 1,220,000 results
> according to googlefight. It's not that "free tagging" is bad, it's just
> that we are creating another barrier. Look at taxonomy vs. categories...
> it's still more accessible to call it "categories" while the savvy
> developer know that "Drupal categories" is another name for a rose called
> "taxonomy". I am ready to admit that "free tagging" is not folksonomy, but
> again, taxonomy vs. categories. You can say that taxonomy vs. categories
> is the camel nose in the tent. I will disagree.
>
> Regards
>
> NK