Hierarchy & Tags - RawSuger

A legitimate issue with tagging / folksonomy as it exists today is that there is no way to distinguish the level of abstraction that the tag represents (see this article for this gripe as well as many unfounded ones I might address in another post). There is no parent/child relationship among tags and so no hierarchy. Why is this a problem? I have this uncontrollable urge to see some order in my tag set and I don’t think I’m alone. When bundles came out on del.icio.us I jumped right on it. Tag clouds (like this and this) are another way to see some order but for my personal stuff a cloud was unsatisfying.

Enter RawSuger - which is, according to David Weinberger “a searchable del.icio.us with automagic, hierarchical clustering.” The impact of this automatic hierarchy will of course depend on how well it actually works - I’ve not tried it - but the possibility is exciting. Why have I not tried it? Tagging is about the community & until RawSuger gains critical mass I can’t see myself switching from del.icio.us because of a single feature, although I might try it when I have a little time.