You knew it at one time.  You also learned another one: the Dewey Decimal Classification System.  These are some of the most well-known classification systems on the planet.  Dewey Decimal taxonomy has been used for more than 130 years and is still in use by more than 200,000 libraries worldwide.  There’s a reason – because it makes sense.  Taxonomy represents a structured system of classification, thus providing a unified vocabulary.  Taxonomy is centrally managed and consistently applied to content.

Folksonomy, on the other hand, refers to categorization by the users.  That’s right, you can crowdsource part of your taxonomy and let your users determine how the content should be classified.

SharePoint provides this natively using Keywords which gives the power of tag-based classification to individual users.  Users can tag content using any Keywords they wish.

They can use their own tags to describe a Page, video, document, image, or any other piece of content.  Your user has the option to make each Keyword public or private. If the user selects to keep a Keyword private, only that specific user sees how they tagged content.

To manage all taxonomy and folksonomy capabilities, SharePoint uses a multi-faceted, tiered classification system across your entire SharePoint infrastructure called Managed Metadata, or Managed Metadata Services.  Managed Metadata supports both a formal taxonomy and an informal folksonomy. Read More