Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about whether users aren't smart enough for tags. It's whether tags work the way users want them to. Tags are for organization. People like to organize things in terms of visual hierarchies and landmarks. Raw tagging systems aren't popular, because most people don't memorize precise strings. [1] They remember roughly what directories look like and 'know where things are' based on whether they believe they ca…
I agree with pretty much everything you said there. I guess you could summarize my post as, "just don't call them folders." I do like that idea though. Users often treat folders like tags. In a manner of speaking folders are tags, in that they label the contents. They just happen to be organized in a hierarchy. The tags get more specific as you dig deeper in to the tree. I'll have a go at reasoning by anecdote. For s…
Fair enough and I absolutely agree. Though be prepared for users to refer to them as such.
And as to tag hierarchies - that's where things have been going. At least, those things I follow (DMSs, CMSs-not-named-Wordpress). It also addresses the concern raised upthread of "Company A\Secrets\Company B vs Company B\Secrets\Company A". With hierarchical tags, this isn't remotely a problem.