Tagging Conventions/Folksonomy

[siouxdax]

Hello all:
This may seem out of left field, but I know that you folks always have the answers.

I'm wanting to go through all of my bookmarks (Firefox) and give the URLs a tag. I'm a complete dork, so I want to know if there's a categorization scheme to follow. I guess I'm looking for something like the Dewey Decimal System of bookmarks. Also I think I should add that I already do some general categorization of my bookmarks in folders; for example 'art', 'tech', 'games', etc. Also, should my tags be more specific than the folders which contain them? Geez, i hope I'm making sense...

PS: What's all this about Folksonomy? I'm reading about it on Wikipedia...

[housetier]

You are making sense to me I am also looking for a guide to building taxonomies. Maybe even a tutorial with lots of examples!

[siouxdax]

housetier:
Glad to know there's other people out there that have uncontrollable urges to classify, organize and sort vast numbers of trivial information.

[tinjaw]

One of the gajillion projects on my Someday/Maybe list is to take a bookmark file and lookup up the most common tags for that URL using delicions, furl, stumbled upon, etc. IOW use the wisdom of the crowd to do the tagging for me.

[Paul Keith]

Sorry, siouxdax. I'm sort of not sure what you want since you already said you use general tags.

Tags are pretty much that way. If the ones you are using works, then it works. If you want a standard, then you have to scrap all your past tags and use that standard so it becomes more like Google's labels.

I mean I could give you further tags to use that are common in social bookmarking applications but I don't know how that would really help you. I guess it could be used as a template for a mass tagger but it defeats the structure of tags and you are better off with a mass folder importer.

[JennyB]

You need to ask yourself why you are keeping all this stuff.

The omnibox in Google Chrome is scarily good at re-finding stuff you have seen recently.
ListMixer is great for temporary ad hoc lists, and stuff that you might, or might not, look at again.

When I do add  link to my personal bookmarks, I take a tip from Jay Baldwin's toolbox

Our tools are sorted by function rather than by name. Whackers, twisters, nabbers, and hole-makers live with their functional kindred. Just seeing them there together can give you an insight into how to do something more easily.

I say to myself "I shall need this again when I want to VERB [adjective] [NOUN] [adverb]

So, for example, the Listmixer bookmarklet is filed under "Keep," together with ones to subscribe to an RSS feed and make a note in Reader. Each main verb is a separate folder on my bookmark bar. By concentrating on what i might actually DO with the link, I avoid large collections tagged "interesting."

[Paul Keith]

JennyB is right although I'd just like to point out that when you start structuring in an "actionable" classification, you're either better off with folders or putting those links in a "list" (preferably a to-do one) which is pretty close to what she did.

The problem with using this system for tags is that you're not really relieved of the structure of tags. You can tag something as "to watch" but later on you might tag something similar as "to verify" or even "to torrent" "to steal" "to pirate" "to rent in Netflix" "to suck up to Big Sis" "to suck up to Dad" "to sneak into theaters" - you see where this is going.

[siouxdax]

Thank all of you! You guys always know.