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Here is an explanation of some tag searching features I hope to see surface.

Search for a tag/s (with Boolean)

Search for a user/s (with Boolean)

Combine these 2 fields
Eg. (User: john OR peter OR lisa) AND (tag: folksonomy OR bookmarks)

del.cio.us tag search can do this to an extent…you can search for one user and up to 7 tags (only the AND function…lacks NOT, OR)

What about searching in a title field, descriptions field.

Of course there is always searching full-text, see this post.

Now a handy idea for del.icio.us would be to search for tags with specific characters or letters (more on this later).

If you are doing research on RSS readers, how do you use del.icio.us to find relevant articles.

You search for tags, using del.cio.us tag search, or just adding the tag to the URL within del.icio.us itself (del.icio.us lacks a public tag search box)

Now how do people bookmark what you call RSS readers

Some people might just use broad terms like:

RSS
Feed
Feeds
Syndicate
Syndicates
XML
atom

Slogging through this may be a bit futile to find relevant items, although the related tags feature may surprise you with some relevant offerings.

Some people may use more specific terms like:

Reader
Readers
Aggregator
Aggregators
Syndicate
Syndicates
Syndicator
Syndicators

Of course these terms may be a bit ambiguous, so this may be futile as well
(since the del.cio.us community thrives with bookmarks on all things RSS this isn’t as bad as it could be for other terms. If the bookmark community was around for, let’s say 10 years, and had broader interests, then a tag like reader may eventually become totally ambiguous.

So maybe you want to add terms, like:

RSS+reader
RSS+readers
RSS+aggregator
RSS+aggregators
RSS+syndicator
RSS+syndicators

…you can interchange the tag “RSS” with; feed, feeds, XML, atom, or even tool/s.

Then you can get really specific or unique and try get into the way people label:

RSSreader
RSS_reader
RSS-reader
RSS-reader
RSS:reader
RSSreaders
RSS_readers
RSS-readers
RSS-readers
RSS:readers

…you can interchange the tag “RSS” with; feed, feeds, XML, atom, or even tool/s.

…you can interchange the tag “reader” with; aggregator, aggregators, syndicator, syndicators or maybe syndicate/s.

…who knows what other symbols are used.

Then there are the spelling mistakes, so you might miss out on relevant stuff that is there, but you can’t find it.

By the way you could also try using brand name tags, such as Bloglines, rojo, etc…

To be exhaustive it is important to use all these variations (there will be a lot of duplication)…you may also want RSS add-on tools, so along with some of the broader tags we’ve covered maybe you can also use the tag “add-on” or “plug-in”…with the symbol and plural variations.

I also think we are using the symbols incorrectly (including myself)

…well there are no rules but common sense or traditional uses for using these symbols may help the folksonomy.

The hyphen (-) should only be used if the term usually has a hyphen, ie. compound words.

The underscore(_) should only be used to denote a space, some people may choose not to use spaces eg. Rssreaders as opposed to rss_readers

The colon (:) should be used to define a category or a higher level tag
Eg. If you have lots of bookmarks on RSS you can always use RSS as a prefix
RSS:readers, RSS:tools, RSS:metrics, RSS:articles, RSS:education, etc….

Wow that was tiring..so how can this be made easier

…ie. how can we make the first stage easier, in finding all the tags related to your research…we want to make sure we have been exhaustive in covering all that is available (have we scouted every tag we can think of, let alone available?)

My point is, what about having a search mechanism similar to CTRL-F, where it will search according to the string of characters.

So if I search RSS, I will get returns for every tag that has the characters RSS.

Same goes with any other term in this example, this way I would only have to search 8 times or terms to get a list of every possible combination we have mentioned above.

That is, if I search the terms:

RSS
XML
Atom
Syndicate/s
Syndicator/s
Reader/s
Feed/s
Aggregator/s

…may also include tool/s, add-on, and plug-in

Then we can browse our list of over a hundred possible tag combinations (including symbols and spelling mistakes) and choose the terms we like, or add together the terms we like.

Also at this stage you could get rid of the duplicates, so you never have to browse through stuff you have already seen.

I guess, as a researcher I’d feel happy having all the relevant tags sitting before me to start with instead of jumping from link to link (chaining), discovering new tags, then thinking hang on have I used that tag with that…you forget after a while and start backtracking and get very bothered (I suppose a search history function helps).

I prefer searching in 2 stages; firstly search for all the relevant tags to your research, then the second stage is searching for items…of course you may come across tags you didn’t think of, especially if you are not familiar with the subject matter or the way people uniquely label things.
That happens all the time, and is part of the discovery…you find a relevant item and you look at the subject terms/tags assigned and then add those terms to your arsenal of tags to browse.

Then what about all the other social bookmark managers, “meta tag search” to the rescue!

PS: …after all that, I forgot to include tags like: web-based, email, desktop, reader/s and aggregator/s, etc…and what about newsreader/s, newsaggregator/s (including the symbols)….the list goes on….