I too, am not really that keen on tagging; for several of the reason that Jeffrey mentioned. However, I think I'm a bit more cavalier than he is!
He said:
From Re: TAGS, a librarians worst nightmare. (or are they?) by jeffkeefer on Monday 03 December 2007 10:13:00:
I know I would tag more if I found other people find it useful. However, I have never received any tagging feedback, and do not really have a need to tag my own items for myself.
My approach is that if others find my tags useful, so much the better. However, if I tag things, I do them the way that *I* find useful; and for myself. One of the reasons that I never really got into del.icio.us is that I was too worried I'd forget tags I'd created in the past. I prefer iKeepbookmarks, as I can shove things in folders. However, it's becoming clear to me, that sometimes I'd want things in two different places. I use WordPress, and can achieve that with it; as the categories let me. However, I can also see the use of tags to further delineate things.
The consistency that Jeffrey mentions is a difficulty though - even when it's only me that I really care about!
As to the spaces / underscores/ OneGiantWord ... if I do the latter, I always use CapitalLetters to delineate some boundaries, but I think_I_prefer_underscores.
As to the odd tags like "Scope668" or whatever it was, I guess as well as fitting in with what I'm assuming is some scope code, it's also something that someone is pretty unlikely to think of at random!
I've also just been reading several case studies of students and their use of online environments. (Not web 2, but discussion boards). One point that several made was that they liked reading others work, but didn't feel that that needed / wanted to contribute to the discussion. While part of me was wondering why they felt that; and whether or not they felt some guilt at not contributing (and, how they'd feel if no-one contributed; would they feel they'd lost out. If so, whose responsibility would it be to get those that liked writing to do something...)
On reading this discussion, I am now thinking two things.
1: By tending to use tags primarily for my own use, and not for the use of others; am I not contributing to the tagoloply or whatever in the same way as those students aren't contributing.
2: Given that I do feel I give a lot to discussions like this - does it "let me off", and, if that's the case, what might those non discussion board students be doing to contribute to the class - perhaps not online, so it's not showing up in the case studies that I was reading...
Incidentally, when I asked my class of 17 or so final year computing undergraduates - in the UK - one of them thought he might have heard of del.icio.us; the rest certainly hadn't; though, as with Jeffrey's students, they're all facebookaholics.