Taxonomy is defined as “the practice and science of classification” – Wikipedia, while Folksonomy is defined as “collaborative tagging” – Wikipedia. Usually, taxonomy refers to the practice of using hierarchical categories applied to the content by a “content editor”, while folksonomy refers to the practice of free-form tagging of content by users. In DotNetNuke, while we expose both of these at the presentation layer, in the API and Data Layer they are implemented using a common data structure.

There are a number of advantages of using a special System Vocabulary for storing user entered tags. One is that both taxonomy terms and folksonomy tags are treated in the API and Data Layer in the same way. This means that we only have to manage one relationship between content and terms rather than two separate relationships. The second benefit of treating tags in this way is that an admin can “manage” the tags – ie remove any offensive or inappropriate tags, or correct spellings of tags, by using the Taxonomy Manager UI.