A way of organizing content by letting ordinary users attach their own freeform tags to items, instead of relying on an official, pre-approved set of categories. The structure grows bottom-up from what people actually call things.
Synonyms
- social tagging
- collaborative tagging
Related terms
In plain words
- letting users make up their own tags to sort things
- the messy but natural way a community labels content itself
Usage example
The photo site uses a folksonomy, so images are grouped by whatever tags members add rather than fixed categories.
Don't confuse with…
- taxonomyA taxonomy is an official, top-down set of categories decided by the site; a folksonomy grows bottom-up from the freeform tags ordinary users add.
Categories
- Information architecture