Since I posted the entry On Folksonomy, Feedback, and Polysemy, there have been some interesting comments added:

Thomas Vander Wal writes:

"The polysemy problem is with tagging and not with folksonomy (if Wikipedia had a proper definition of folksonomy it would be clear). The folksonomy actually provides a solutions to the problem as people are less likely to reuse the same tag for differing items than the whole of a community. But when the individual does use the tag for more than one definition the other tags they apply to the object normally make it very easy to discern the tag's definition.

This is one major value to people using their own terms in tags, rather than relying on what others call them. But the main reason I find it important for people to tag with terms in their own vocabulary is for their own refindability of the object. When people use the terms of others the refindability drops off quite a bit as it is not the terminology that is most used by them and not familiar enough to use it as a search term for their own items.

The emergent values are also essential, but the prime value is for the tools to work as a tool for recalling their own objects of interest. There has to be inherent value for the people themselves using any social tool for them to continue use of it."

"Thomas, I believe you're making an assumption about the type of apps that use folksonomies (where folksonomies grow?). Yes, Delicious.com was designed primarily to aid individual memory, but it's entirely possible that other apps might be designed to make online resources more findable by others. E.g., a knowledge management well might want to add tagging primarily as a way of making individual discoveries available to an entire organization. In such a case, the folksonomy that organization needs is helped by showing taggers the popular tags as they are in the act of tagging precisely so they won't fall into the "trap" of using tags that are meaningful and memorable to them but not to others.

It seems to me that either type of tagging system can be useful, depending, of course, on the aims of its users."

There are two types of folksonomy being discussed here: one that emerges from blind mass individual action, while not necessarily being the intended goal of the system, and one which emerges as the intended goal of mass individual action/interaction. In the case of del.icio.us I think it would be difficult to say that it is purely a tool for individual use as this would imply that the emergent folksonomy is merely a handy side-effect. The social/public aspect of the site suggests that the intent of the tagging is, partially, to influence the actions of other users in the system. Additionally, the emergent folksonomy is an explicit goal of the system, making it difficult for a user to remain uninfluenced by it.

Personal refindability is certainly a major part of a social bookmarking site but shares the stage with the social aspects which allow for the emergent properties.

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Some recent, related links:
Social Networking Gets Traction
Tag Along