TedPage: Tagging for data loss

Social tagging has become a popular data organization method. It can be seen on websites such as del.icio.us and Flickr, and in applications such as F-Spot and Evolution. It is an interesting technique as it allows relatively simple operations and tags to be combined for more complex data sets. This is the basis of Wolfram's book, and it is definitely a subject worthy of further study. But, I have to wonder whether this simplistic organization is causing some data to be lost.

One case lies in geographic data. If you look at my del.icio.us tags you'll notice a few related to geography two of which are US:CA:LA and US:CA:ElSegundo. While these two tags are different to me, for people people they are basically the same place. So, if you're looking for a good place to grab fish and chips in LA you probably won't look in the El Segundo tag, and you'd really miss out on The El Segundo Fish Company (okay, they don't have a website, but it made a good example).

While adding anything to the tags will ruin some if it's beautiful simplicity, I think that we need to add an identification for the type of data in the tag. It could work much like the protocol specification in URIs, location:LosAngeles. With this extra bit of information search, and more importantly find, could be made more efficient.