Weighted Tags.
Experiments with tagging (folksonomy) have had varying levels of success, and remain relatively unchanged from inception. Experiments with social rating have proven pretty sucessful with the likes of digg, and reddit.
The problem with tagging currently seems to lie in the lack of accuracy achieved by automatic tagging solutions, and various issues around user tagging (moderation, effort…etc).
A possible solution to these issues with beneficial side effects would be to add weightings to tags via a simple vote up or down mechanism. The base layer of tags could be applied by either content creator (unvotable) or automatic tagger, then futher refinement of the tags by other users adding, or voting up or down on existing tags could occur. A tag voted to a score of zero would be removed until independently added by another user, making the community moderation of rogue users a far simpler task.
The potential benefits of the weighting could include navigational aides like most activity, most controversy, similar, recent and of course search and discovery…etc on a per tag, or tag grouping level. Personal tags, for bookmarking/re-discovery could be included (with the other tags) by a simple syntax differentiation ie. /Research Ideas/.
—-In Progress—
Tahnks for posting