homeworks

One of my classes was put online since my professor was out of town; right now I'm listening to a lecture on controlled vocabulary, specifically controlled vocab vs uncontrolled vocab. They both have considerable advantages and disadvantages and generally a system/index has to choose one or the other. With controlled vocab you get more organization, consistency, fewer repeats and junk terms, but they're hard to update and maintain and come at a high cost. Uncontrolled vocab is easier to update, is done in the language of the authors, and can cover a wider scope, but at the same time it can lead to too many terms that are inconsistency and unspecified.

There has to be a way for a system/index to use both methods of organization. I think AO3 has a good method: users input their own tags (which are uncontrolled vocabulary) which are then wrangled behind the scenes into a hierarchy (making them semi-controlled). However I help wrangle tags and I can see how this system is flawed - users don't input the terms in correctly, characters have multiple names/identities or the same name is used for multiple, unrelated characters...

What would be a better way to incorporate user tags with system standards?

Yay what I'm learning has real-world implications!