Tags Are Not Taxonomies

A flat label set is not a classification system, no matter how many you add.

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A flat label set is not a classification system, no matter how many labels you add. Tags are a folksonomy — bottom-up, overlapping, full of near-synonyms. Taxonomies are top-down, exclusive, and committed to a theory of how the world divides.

This matters because users navigate them differently. Tags are good for serendipity and recall: I remember a vibe, I follow the vibe, I find adjacent things. Taxonomies are good for completeness and audit: show me everything in this category and nothing outside it.

Pick the structure that matches the question your users are actually asking. And when you find yourself adding a meta tag to tag your tags, accept that you have grown a taxonomy by accident and start designing it on purpose.