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IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010this facilitates the process of authority ascription since users are the more recommended ones to evaluate thecategorizers (because they already know them) and are already familiarized with the use of tags and with thefolksonomy technique operation. Fourth, a folksonomy allows to identify more of the context in which theauthority was granted than any other evaluation scheme could provide (a reputation scheme, for instance).Authorities are not identified based in a single weight/value determined by an algorithm with pre-definedcriteria; instead, they are identified based in people’s subjective opinion, in the diversity and in theunpredictability of those opinions.The fact that folksonomy-based systems have their users as categorizers of information makes them afavorable environment for the application of the folkauthority concept, because the authority ascription startsto happen over the group of users itself, spreading the authority from its users to their categorizations.Applying this concept in the TM system is still more suitable, because unifying our two approaches (the tagfocusedand the user-focused) allows recognizing/identifying authorities in different systems, as well as theirinformation—the authority ascribed in the TM system worth for all systems with which it synchronizes.Besides, the authority ascription can also take advantage of the more organized vocabularies that the TM canprovide. We can see a symbiosis relation here, where the folkauthority approach can improve the informationretrieval quality in the TM system, while the benefits generated from the centralization and management ofour tag-focused approach can improve the quality of the generated personomy and by consequence of theauthority definition.Using the folksonomy technique for the cognitive authority ascription in folksonomy-based systems iswhat can be called a meta-categorization. Since, unlike the conventional categorization process in whichusers attribute tags describing the content or meaning of an object, in the folkauthority process users attributetags to others users of the system (i.e., the source of information) describing their competences, abilities,knowledge or the areas in which those users are considered as reference. In this way, in a first level there is acategorization over the objects (information), and in a second level the categorization happens over theuser/sources; a categorization of the categorizers by the categorizers. Therefore, our approach of applying thefolkauthority concept in the TM system represents an initiative of using folksonomy to improve the processof information organization and retrieval in systems that already apply it.5. TAGMANAGER: A TAG-FOCUSED APPROACHIn this paper, we discuss about the folksonomy technique presenting their main benefits and disadvantages,and taking into account their two stages of use from the users’ interaction point of view: the informationcategorization and the information retrieval.Seeing folksonomy through the lenses of the three pivots (the tag, the object and the user) allowsresearches and designers to focus their attention in specific challenges while considering the whole dynamicof tags usage. It is possible to observe this in our two approaches: the TM system and the Folkauthority. Thediscussions exposed in this paper about folksonomy become even more critical when they are consideredover multiple systems simultaneously (both challenges and opportunities are emphasized). The approachimplemented by the TM system is focused on the tag pivot (for the centralization and management of theusers’ vocabulary) aiming at building a better personomy and, consequently, a more structured and organizedfolksonomy without controlling the used vocabulary. On the other hand, the folkauthority approach isfocused on the user pivot aiming at identifying users that are cognitive authorities for improving the qualityand relevance in the information retrieval. This approach represents a distinct strategy in which we propose ameta-categorization that uses the own folksonomy technique to the reduction of problems found in systemsthat already apply it.Both the tag and the user-focused approaches can help in obtaining better results in atagging/folksonomy-based system. However, great advantages are only obtained if these approaches areemployed together, once they can create a symbiotic relation in assisting users during the use of a system. Forinstance, with the management of users’ vocabularies we could assist users when they are categorizingobjects as well as ascribing cognitive authority, and with the centralization of users’ personomies we canidentify every piece of information categorized by the users who are authorities in a certain subject. Hence,when we apply these two approaches together we are also directing efforts to the object pivot, helping inquestions of information quality, relevance, organization and findability. Indeed, we argue that it is only149