folksonomy

A folksonomy is a system in which users apply public tags  to online items, typically to aid them in re-finding those items. This can give rise to a classification system based on those tags and their frequencies, in contrast to a taxonomic classification specified by the owners of the content when it is published. This practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging. However, these terms have slightly different meanings than folksonomy. Folksonomy was originally “the result of personal free tagging of information [...] for one’s own retrieval.”. Social tagging is the application of tags in an open online environment where the tags of other users are available to others. Collaborative tagging (also known as group tagging) is tagging performed by a group of users. This type of folksonomy is commonly used in cooperative and collaborative projects such as research, content repositories, and social bookmarking.