While some continue to debate the usefulness of tag-based folksonomies, others are starting to build abstraction layers on top of a growing body of user-tagged data. Link >>

The value of Flickr tags just struck me yesterday.  One of the ongoing challenges with community sites like EarlyCJ5.com is how to handle the inevitable influx of pictures after a group event (trail runs in this case). 

Everyone has pics, and everyone else wants to see them.  We’ve had a gallery application for while, but there is always access and management issues, not to mention file size concerns—to many images and we bump over our space alotment on the host server.

Enter Flickr and tagging.  EarlyCJ5.com community members could create and manage their own Flickr accounts.  While uploading, they tag images with agreed-upon keywords like “EarlyCJ5TellicoRun05”.  The entire aggregated collection of pictures from this event are then available via a URL like:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/EarlyCJ5TellicoRun05/  (Note - there are no actual photos available there, I’m just demonstrating the URL structure.)

Voila!  Instant community shared photo album.  Way cool.  This group of photos would also be available as an RSS feed, so the EarlyCJ5.com site could display that feed back on their pages, effectively mimicking the hosted gallery application we have now.

Other tags could include driver name, vehicle name, trail name, etc.  Or add more abstract tags like trail type, vehicle color, etc.  All those collections would then be available to the group.

The only bummer?  FlickR photos are delivered via Flash, which means EarlyCJ5.com members couldn’t include them in a post in the forum.

Still, something to consider.