The author of Web 2.0 research wrote to me that my thoughts about social tagging reminded her about a post by VanderWal. Its an excellent post that pins the sloppiness in our Internet jargon. Thanks for the hint.
VanderWal writes about the differences between the terms collaborative and collective.
Collaborative is consensus seeking and “usually aims at […]

There’s a discussion on the DC-SOCIAL TAGGING mailingslist about what so social about social tagging.
Many interesting viewpoints have emerged. It started with a question by Liddy Nevile:

I would like us to think carefully again about calling it social tagging - I suspect that ’social’ tagging has a theoretical implication - that it’s tagging […]

My supervisor Jesper Schneider asked me “What does social mean?” the other day. Thats actually a very good question. So here I list some definitions, while I ponder my definition of social.
Wikipedia has many more or less helpfull definitions. In the introduction there’s a rather good sentence
“…its meaning is at times vague, suggesting that it […]