Web 2.0

Tags

In many Web 2.0 programs, the user is able to provide tags for their entries. These are keywords and are used to link articles. For example, if someone tags a Youtube video with the words comedy, Australia, ocean, other videos with these tags will be offered as being similar. However, tags such as hilarious, Down Under, sea, will not equate with the first three. And neither will comedian, Australian, Pacific Ocean. Even misspellings don't match.

Some programs, such as Google's Blogger, allow you to see the list of tags that you have previously used so that you select from them, rather than creating new ones all the time. But by and large, tagging is fairly chaotic. Owing to the extremely high number of people using Web 2.0. programs, there is enough critical mass to make it work. But a systematic taxonomy of tags would improve the effectiveness manifestly.

Moodle uses Web 2.0. tagging in Interests in people's profiles and in its Blog. In the latter case, the course administrators can add set tags to help unify the cross-referencing of blog entries.