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Human touch in taxonomies

Theresa Regli has written an article on the need for a human touch in taxonomies. To quote:

If "rocket" did mean the same thing to everyone, it would be far easier to sit back and let software create taxonomies and classify content without human intervention. But sadly, we're still picking classification terms out of long drop-down menus and clicking "submit." Content managers begin to see cross-eyed, corporate librarians revise and retrain. Is there a happy medium? What amount of "the human factor" -- the influence that people bring to the process of creating a taxonomy and subsequently, tagging content -- really makes sense? How much should subject matter experts be involved, from the beginning of the process through ongoing maintenance?

Posted by jamesr on December 24, 2006 09:53 AM
Categories: Information architecture