Information Research Weblog

I see the word 'folksonomy' occasionally, used to describe the social indexing of Web pages. It's a really, really silly term: according to Wikipedia:

The term folksonomy is a portmanteau that specifically refers to the tagging systems created within Internet communities. A combination of the words folk (or folks) and taxonomy, the term folksonomy literally means "people's classification management": "Taxonomy" is from the Greek taxis and nomos. Taxis means "classification" and nomos (or nomia) means "management," while "Folk" is from the Old English folc, meaning people.

This is etymological nonsense - taxonomy comes from two Greek words meaning 'order' and 'law' or 'science' - hence taxonomy is the science of order or ordering. 'Folksonomy' is etymologically illiterate since it tries to combine the Germanic origin word 'folk' with the Greek origin for 'science', hence 'folksonomy' would be a bastardised word meaning 'the science of people'.

Perhaps the adoption of 'classification' and 'indexing' would remove the silliness that seems to inflict Web gurus.