re 1: tagging on pinboard doesn't feel quite the same as it did on delicious. I think it is missing things.
re 2: yes. you need to re-present the tags that people use in such a way that the useage doesn't spread out over time. i use only ~ 500 tags and create new ones very, very rarely.
re 3: this is something i always wanted to do but never had the time.
for namespacing: delicious originally had that. was called "hierarchical tags." foo.bar would match foo.bar.baz ... I eventually took it out.
Re 2: you do need to re use your tags, but it is also true that the more tags you use the better. Having a long tail of very specific tags is not an issue because it allows you to go very quickly to that specific tag, but re-using the general tag allows finding the item if the specific tag is forgotten. So you need both. The only problem this causes is browsing your tags, but then you're not really trying to find an item in thay case, so it doesn't matter as much.
> Having a long tail of very specific tags is not an issue because it allows you to go very quickly to that specific tag
> The only problem this causes is browsing your tags
It also causes a problem if you can't remember the name of the tag. Then you need to browse your list of tags and try to figure out what it is. It's much easier to do this if you have 200 tags vs. 2000 tags.
I see your point, yes. If you can't remember the name of the general tag, yes, you need to browse. Assuming the general tag is used somewhat often though, some services allow you to filter tags based on how often they're used (Pinboard does this).
re 2: yes. you need to re-present the tags that people use in such a way that the useage doesn't spread out over time. i use only ~ 500 tags and create new ones very, very rarely.
re 3: this is something i always wanted to do but never had the time.
for namespacing: delicious originally had that. was called "hierarchical tags." foo.bar would match foo.bar.baz ... I eventually took it out.